Disney Star, JioCinema’s IPL 2023 viewership fight ends with record numbers for both

While Disney Star, the official television broadcaster of IPL, said an astounding 50.5 crore viewers tuned in to the network’s live broadcast of the matches on television, JioCinema, the official streaming partner, said a record 44.9 crore viewers tuned in on the OTT platform.

Disney Star said IPL has become the first cricket tournament to register over half a billion viewers on TV.

“From last ball nail-biters to high-scoring thrillers, from the addition of the impact player rule to the emergence of future stars, from the last spot on the playoffs being decided in the last league stage match to the tournament winner being decided on the final ball, this edition of IPL has been special in many ways. Countless memories will be etched in cricket history including the fact that is the first time that half a billion viewers tuned in for a Cricket tournament,” said Sanjog Gupta, Head – Sports at Disney Star.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had set up a rivalry outside the ground starting this IPL between Disney Star and Mukesh Ambani’s flagship OTT platform JioCinema after it split the TV and digital rights of IPL from 2023-2027 to eventually garner a whopping Rs 48,390 crore in total.

Disney Star bagged the TV rights for Rs 23,575 crore and Reliance-backed Viacom18 got digital rights for Rs 23,758 crore.Disney Star said it accumulated 4,271 crore minutes of watch time for the live broadcast of the matches and it witnessed a remarkable growth of 32% in match TVR* compared to the last edition, the broadcaster said citing BARC data.The final match between GT and CSK registered a peak concurrency of 6.41 crores – the highest for IPL 2023. Additionally, 47 out of 74 matches registered peak concurrency of more than three crores.

Disney Star broadcasted the IPL matches on their Star Sports channels in English, Hindi and several regional languages. The broadcaster had also launched new HD South Indian language channels for broadcasting IPL and also played up the region-specific themes.

The broadcaster also launched interactive features on TV sets, allowing viewers to watch match highlights at any time, fix cameras on their favorite stars or get real-time subtitles of commentary at the click of a button.

The broadcaster has reached new heights in high-definition (HD) broadcasting, with an incredible 101 million viewers tuning in to the HD broadcast, it said. This number is three times higher compared to last year, demonstrating the growing preference for high-definition sports viewing.

JioCinema, which was streaming IPL for the first time, also offered commentaries in several regional languages, apart from English and implemented interactive features ranging from live quizzes, multi-mode camera to access to all stats of a match at the press of a button.

JioCinema said connected TV adoption scaled up rapidly this season, with more than 12.6 crore viewers logging in to JioCinema to watch IPL.

Backed by Viacom 18, JioCinema streamed IPL on mobiles, tablets, laptops/desktops and Connected TVs. The OTT platform streamed the world’s second richest league for free in 4k mode, even as it consumed Internet data.

For the final match, which MS Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings won by five wickets in a rain-hit match against the Gujarat Titans, the concurrent viewership on JioCinema recorded 32 million, beating its previous record of 25.7 million viewers for the second qualifier between Gujarat Titans and Mumbai Indians.

The average time spent per viewer per match across the tournament on Connected TVs with JioCinema was 65 minutes, the company said.