Building blocks in place, Viacom18 will hope to build profitable sports business: Anil Jayaraj, CEO

The company recently bagged the TV and digital rights to all the domestic and international cricket matches held in India for ₹5,963 crore till 2028. The company will be paying ₹67.76 crore per match, including ₹35.23 crore a match for digital and ₹32.53 crore per match for TV.

Last year, the company won the digital rights to the IPL for a sum of ₹23,758 crore till 2027.

“We want to run a profitable sports business. With all the building blocks in place, all our efforts are directed towards building a profitable sports business. At a large scale, you can’t afford to have a loss-making sports business,” said Jayaraj.
He further stated that the BCCI media rights acquisition will bolster Viacom18’s sports business as it has come at a reasonable price. “We have won the BCCI rights at a good price, and this is something that will work out very well for us. Indian cricket is still among the preeminent viewing events in the country,” Jayaraj said.While Viacom18 has been a big believer in digital, the company’s decision to bid for the BCCI TV rights surprised many.Nevertheless, Jayaraj said that the company’s fundamental perspective remains unchanged: digital is on the rise, while television is experiencing a decline. “While many consumers have fully moved to digital, there are some consumers who are yet to fully move to digital. We want to use the power of cricket to enable the transition of consumers from linear TV to digital, which includes connected TV (CTV),” he stated.

Jayaraj believes that the monetisation of the sports content will be driven by mobile and CTV, as that’s where consumers are moving.

“If IPL experience is anything to go by, making money on TV is tough,” he said. Viacom18 will bundle TV and digital ad inventory for India’s bilateral cricket matches.

However, advertisers will also have the choice to buy ad inventory on any one of the platforms.

Asked about the declining viewer interest in ODIs and Tests and whether that will impact Viacom18’s monetisation efforts.

“Compared to the previous cycle (2018–23), this cycle (2023–28) has a larger number of T20 matches, and T20 monetisation is quite big. There are a larger number of games against quality teams like England and Australia. That has a direct correlation to monetisation,” he said.

Viacom18’s strategy for India cricket is to serve mobile and CTV consumers on digital and pay and free-to-air (FTA) audiences on linear TV.

As part of this strategy, the upcoming India vs. Australia series will be aired on Sports18 channel besides the TV network’s Hindi and regional entertainment and movie channels like Colors Cineplex Superhits, Colors Tamil, Colors Kannada Cinema, and Colors Bangla Cinema.

“We will put India cricket on multiple channels, which will again serve the purpose of affordability,” Jayaraj said.

On digital, the company’s streaming platform, JioCinema, will continue to have a multi-lingual presentation supplemented by multi-faceted features like multi-camera and 4K.

“It’s our mission to provide high-quality, accessible coverage in an affordable manner to all Indians. Our strategy is not just providing cricket for free but also about providing high-quality coverage, whether it’s 4K or multi-cam,” Jayaraj said.

The CEO said that he is particularly bullish about Connected TV (CTV), which currently has a reach of 40 million homes and is expected to grow dramatically in the coming years since most TV sets that are sold these days are internet-enabled.

“Connected TV is a big part of our push. IPL was viewed by about 125 million viewers on CTV, and we are hoping to build on that. We believe that the CTV base in India is 40 million, and this doesn’t include people who are casting from their phones or are connecting through basic cables,” he said.

Jayaraj is confident about the potential of non-cricket properties like the Olympics, football, basketball, badminton, and motorsports.

“Viewership numbers are very encouraging for properties like the NBA, badminton, and MotoGP. On digital, consumers can follow niche sports. It’s our belief that monetisation will also catch up because people want to pay for eyeballs,” he noted.