IPL media rights auction and revelations on the future of sports viewership
Words by: Hazel Austin Photographs: Deccan Chronicle
The recently concluded auction that kept a lot of people on tenterhooks is finally over. The world waited with bated breath as few men sat pontificating on whom they would bestow the sceptre and orb upon. The mood was sober as the auction was underway at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. At the end of it all, the world witnessed the birth of a new power as Star India, owned by by 21st Century Fox, clinched the winning bid for a whopping Rs Rs 16347.5 crore laying claim to the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) media rights for all the markets (digital and television) for the next five years.
Play Replay
Apart from the big money changing hands, one more thing was clearly evident with the turn of events, the growing clout of digital content in the grand scheme of sports broadcast. Among the 24 who picked out the media rights tender, Reliance Jio Digital, Amazon Seller Service, Airtel, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo figured on the list. It was clear that the preeminence of TV as the choice medium was on its way out and in another ten years time, it would be difficult to differentiate between what is digital and TV hence, signalling the need for a concerted approach.
But first, let’s look at how India’s very own sporting league has evolved over the years. Conceptualized in 2007 and now a decade old, the Indian Premier League began with the franchisees being awarded to individuals, celebrities and a group of corporates. Over time the IPL has mutated into a media beast that could soon well be toppling over the decades old major sporting events across the world. The Indian Premier League currently enjoys a global viewership and a fan following unrivalled by any other cricketing league.
The continued unprecedented response from advertisers, broadcasters, sponsors, affiliates, partners and the viewing public year after year, has made the IPL the most keenly awaited event in the campaign calendar for advertisers and the most viewed sporting event for TV viewers in India.
The winning game
The concluded auction bid has generated a lot of discussion over the figures that have left many wide eyed. The change from the previous auction is striking – on a per year basis, the increase works out to Rs 3,269 crore per year from the previous Rs 1,012 crore per year.
While some analysts are warily suggesting that the quoted figures are a bit too much, other astute observers are of the opinion that Star was clear and farsighted in their approach. They either wanted the whole thing or nothing at all.
BCCI was brilliant in its strategy of maximizing value by unbundling the media rights and selling them in seven different categories – TV rights for the Indian subcontinent, digital rights for the Indian subcontinent, both TV and digital rights for the USA, Europe, Middle East, Africa regions and the rest of the world.
Now let us deconstruct the big numbers to make some cohesion of the bids; The biggest fight, was for the broadcast rights of the tournament where Sony made a top bid of Rs 11,050 crore, and Star India proposed a sum of just Rs 6,196 crore. But then how did Star walk home with the rights?
Well, Star was prudent enough to put across the table a consolidated bid that worked up to 16,347.50 crores, 13 other bidders including Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and Yahoo also made big offerings in the bidding rounds. Facebook, a company that has never compelled to shell out money for content almost made a winning bid of Rs 3,900 crore for the digital rights, beating Airtel’s Rs 3,280 crore and Jio’s Rs 3,075.72 crore. Star, on the other hand, quoted a consolidated figure that that beat the sum of the highest bids in individual categories which totalled Rs 15,820 crore.
Star’s new victory changes the geographies in which the IPL will now be watched, both on TV as well as on mobile devices. To put things in perspective, the tournament was never broadcast in Australia despite the large number of Australians in the IPL. Now it will be. Also worth noting is the hard hitting fact that as Star nets these rights, it has outrightly established its monopoly over the broadcast of Indian cricket. Star is the title holder of rights to all International Cricket Council events, from World Cups to the ICC World Twenty20, till 2023, and also owns the rights to cricket played in India till March 2018 and now the IPL till 2022.
Beginning a new innings
Digital content is gaining ground as a very strong medium of social media engagement for sports viewers. Attributing to this is the simple change that viewers are no longer willing to wait for the updates, they want the convenience of anytime-anywhere access to matches and scores.
Smartphone penetration in India has multiplied in recent years and has led to a substantial increase in digital consumption. Statistics put the number of smartphone users in India as crossing 450 million by 2021. Out of which, 60 to 70 percent of the smartphone users are believed to be using the internet on their phones.
In a cricket obsessed country as ours, it translates to a directly proportional trend in the increase in the digital content consumption for IPL. Data from social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram suggest that IPL and individual franchisees have witnessed an uptick in support by the fans. According to a Maxus report, IPL 10 registered the highest number of conversations ever across the social media platforms. Six million mentions around IPL were registered during the current season which was twice the IPL 9’s mentions.
Facilitated by Over The Top (OTT) platforms, sporting enthusiasts are now able to catch-up on the live matches on their mobile phones. Hotstar won the three-year digital broadcasting rights for IPL in 2015. According to a Duff & Phelps report, IPL viewership has shown an upward trend year-on year with 41 million viewers in 2015, 100 million in 2016, and is expected to have reached a 130 million mark in 2017. The average time spent per user for an IPL match on Hotstar is 40–45 minutes, up from 30-35 minutes during IPL 9, which is on par with Sony’s average viewership of around 45 minutes per user.
This surge in online streaming of IPL and the growing relevance of OTT as a medium to watch sports online explains the growing interest in companies flocking to acquire digital rights for streaming sporting events. The growing popularity of IPL across social media platforms and the plethora of content being generated from videos and images to tweets heralds the dawn of a new era with regard to sports consumption. We are witnesses to the dawn of a new era and social media obsession of cricket fans are the new constant.