What next for JioCinema after IPL comes to an end? Here's what industry insiders say

The 16th season of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 is coming to an end on May 28 after a long run of close to two months. JioCinema, the official digital streaming partner of TATA IPL 2023, has been setting new records with its IPL viewership. The platform received 1300 crore video views in the first five weeks of the tournament, and more than 60 minutes average user time spent per match. This season, the number of sponsors during IPL's digital streaming reached 26, the highest ever for any sporting tournament.

“Advertisers are the big winners this season and that’s the way it should be. Through JioCinema, advertisers are reaching the right audiences at the right price. JioCinema has opened doors for a lot of advertisers, smaller brands and companies to join the bandwagon, what use to be the exclusive preserve of top 100 advertisers.” Anil Jayaraj, CEO, Viacom18 Sports, said.

According to the recent TAM report, CTV (connected TV) ad spots have shown a 20 per cent growth. “IPL on Digital has democratized TV for the advertisers. Earlier, to advertise on TV, you needed huge budgets. Now you don't need huge budgets to advertise on TV. We're looking at anywhere between 25 million to 40 million CTV households being reached. And what we've seen in the end metric, CTV advertising performs better as compared to a regular ad on the mobile,” Amardeep Singh, CEO, Interactive Avenues said.

According to EY’s M&E Consultant Ashish Pherwani, while 44 per cent Indian sports fans watch live sports only on TV, a sizeable 36 per cent are using both traditional and digital media to watch live sports, while the remaining 20 per cent are watching exclusively on digital. He said that with the announcement of IPL being provided free on digital streaming, we expect this viewership to increase significantly, and this could make it difficult to grow ad revenues on TV as viewership will split across platforms.

He also said that the free streaming of the IPL on JioCinema, could impact paid subscriptions. “SVOD (subscription video on demand) platforms will need to increase their content investments to grow and retain paying subscribers, and we expect to see leaders and challengers alike increasing content budgets,” he said.

Experts say that post IPL, JioCinema will need to scale up its content game and the OTT platform is already on track. Viacom18's JioCinema plans to bulk up on content with more than 100 films and TV series to its platform to take on global biggies like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar. According to sources, the company is also looking to finalise the merger between Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd-owned video streaming app Voot and JioCinema. The merger is expected to be announced in May end and industry experts say that it will help the company streamline content and viewership that’s currently going on two separate platforms. 

“Voot will most likely be merged with JioCinema and the latter brand will continue since it’s become more popular after the successful run of the IPL,” a person familiar with the matter said on the condition of anonymity.