Disney Star, Viacom18 in race to offload IPL 2023 ad

Disney Star, Viacom18 in race to offload IPL 2023 ad

Disney Star and Viacom18, media rights holders for the Indian Premier League (IPL), are locked in a competition to mop up advertising from the market after having committed nearly ₹48,000 crore to the country’s premier sports league.

The two have started reaching out to brands and media agencies for selling IPL ad inventory.

Domestic digital rights owner Viacom18 has taken a huge gambit by keeping IPL free of cost on its Jio Cinema streaming app, in line with its strategy for the recent FIFA World Cup 2022. The platform intends to grow the audience reach of IPL digitally and monetise it through ads.

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Jio Cinema has also priced its ad inventory for the upcoming IPL lower than what Disney+Hotstar had charged for IPL 2022. The Viacom18-owned platform’s CPM (cost per thousand impressions) price is ₹190 per 10 seconds compared to Disney+Hotstar’s ₹210 per 10 seconds in the last edition.

The connected TV spot rate for the Jio Cinema app is ₹6.5 lakh per 10 seconds.

Disney Star’s asking rate for TV commercials during IPL 2023 ranges from ₹16 lakh to ₹17.5 lakh per 10-second spot, which is higher than last year’s rate of ₹14.5 lakh for a 10-second spot.

A media buying professional, however, said, “This IPL will be tough to monetise for both Disney Star and Viacom18 due to the ad slowdown.”

Another media buyer said the success of Disney Star and Viacom18’s ad monetisation strategy will depend on the customisations that they offer to clients.

Media agencies are spoilt for choice as the two rights holders are coming up with innovative advertising packages to increase their overall advertiser count.

“The ad inventory on TV is fixed, so the only way to grow the ad revenue is by taking a rate hike and coming up with customised offerings,” a senior media executive said. “On digital, the inventory is not static, and the ad revenue growth is dependent on impressions.”

Disney Star will be curating packages for clients depending on their budgets by creating assets during the live broadcast. For big sponsors, the sponsorship outlay ranges from ₹100 crore to ₹200 crore, depending on the inventory consumption.

“Star Sports is giving first preference to its long-term clients,” said the media executive quoted above.

Jio Cinema is offering flexibility to brands on overall outlays to give them an opportunity to advertise on a premium property like the IPL. “Jio Cinema intends to attract a large advertiser base by lowering the entry barrier,” the executive added.

It is learnt that Jio Cinema will have 15 feeds across multiple languages while Disney Star plans to broadcast IPL on over 22 channels with 10+ feeds across multiple languages.

Media experts believe that the two platforms have their own set of challenges apart from the ad slowdown. For Disney Star, the free streaming of IPL on Jio Cinema has the potential to hamper its pay TV business.