Streaming in India: The Success Story of JioCinema & IPL
The Streaming Lab #53
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Welcome to the 53rd edition of The Streaming Lab. Thanks for reading me.
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This week’s program
Exactly one week ago, the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament game between Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans became the most watched digital event globally. Let me analyze the success of JioCinema & IPL for you.
The OTT Sports strategy of JioCinema
The balance between reach & revenues
What’s next for JioCinema in India?
The OTT sports strategy of JioCinema
JioCinema, whose largest investor is Ambani’s Reliance, won last year a $3 billion bidding war against Disney and secured the digital rights for the IPL for five years until 2027. The OTT platform decided to make the tournament available for free in India.
The magic happened last Monday during the final of the 16th edition of the IPL: JioCinema broke the global record for the most concurrent views to a live streamed event with 32 million simultaneous viewers.
The last record was 25.3 million simultaneous viewers during an ICC Cricket World Cup semi-final game between India and New Zealand in July 2019 on Hotstar.
IPL is not the first success of JioCinema with sports events. Last year, the OTT platform also offered the FIFA World Cup for free in India. By deciding to stream those 2 major sports events on JioCinema without charging any subscription fee, Reliance Jio is doing to cable TV operators what it did to telecom operators several years ago when it started charging only for data and not voice usage.
The short term objective is clear: increase JioCinema’s market shares.
The balance between reach & revenues
In terms of audience, this edition of IPL on JioCinema registered a total of 17 billion video views and 120 million unique viewers. As you can see below, the number of mobile and web visits saw a nice increase in the past 2 months ↓
In terms of revenues, the streaming partner for Tata IPL 2023 has generated around $300m in advertising revenue.
It looks like streaming the IPL for free made a big difference, with the money brands spent on digital multiplied by 2 from last year. As a comparison, Disney+ Hotstar earned about $133m in Ad revenue last year with the streaming rights for IPL.
Twenty-six brands partnered with JioCinema for IPL 2023: Dream11, JioMart, PhonePe, Tiago EV, Jio, Appy Fizz, ET Money, Castrol, TVS, Oreo, Bingo, Sting, AJIO, Haier, RuPay, Louis Philippe Jeans, Amazon, Rapido, Ultra Tech Cement, Puma, Kamla Pasand, Kingfisher Power Soda, Jindal Panther TMT Rebar, Saudi Tourism, Spotify and AMFI.
What’s next for JioCinema in India?
JioCinema recently launched a subscription package: JioCinema Premium, unlocking access to a broader range of content for an affordable price of 999 Indian rupees ($12).
The premium tier will include content from two major studios: Warner Bros and NBCUniversal.
The HBO shows currently available on the platform include Succession, The Last of Us, House of the Dragon, Westworld, The White Lotus, Mare of Easttown, Winning Time, Barry, Big Little Lies, Chernobyl, White House Plumbers, Silicon Valley, True Detective, Newsroom, Game of Thrones, Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Perry Mason. JioCinema is also streaming Warners Bros. content like Harry Potter movies, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League and the Batman trilogy.Â
The deal with NBCUniversal includes popular series like The Office, Parks and Recreation, Downton Abbey, Suits and The Mindy Project, as well as blockbuster franchises such as Jurassic Park, Jason Bourne, Shrek, The Mummy, Pitch Perfect and the Fast franchise.
I would not be surprised to hear other announcements very soon.
That’s all for today, what’s behind the world record of 32m concurrent streams during the final IPL game on JioCinema.
See you online next week. Until then, enjoy Greek Salad on Prime Video. A little over twenty years after the release of L'Auberge Espagnole, Cédric Klapisch declines his film trilogy in series. Salade Grecque tells the story of Wendy and Xavier's children, Tom and Mia, who are in their twenties.
Hi Yann, nice article. what’s the source for 120 MN unique viewers?