Video streaming provider Hotstar expects to reach more than 300 million viewers during the upcoming IPL season, about 50% more than in the last year, while also making the viewing experience more interactive and social.
“We have invested a lot in getting ready to be able to scale our platform and reach over 300 million users this IPL… A lot of work that has gone into scaling the technology to get us is ready for the reach and concurrency,” Varun Narang, chief product officer, Hotstar, told The Hindu.
Last year, the video streaming platform reached about 202 million viewers. Mr. Narang said that during the recent India-New Zealand cricket series, Hotstar had a record number of 11.2 million people watching the match at the same time on the platform and with IPL, they expect this number to be “significantly larger.”
‘Deeper and wider’
Mr. Narang said they were anticipating greater adoption and usage of Hotstar “deeper and wider in the country.”
“Hotstar usage and adoption is going beyond the metro areas and smaller cities are now becoming a bigger percentage in share of consumption. Last year, the majority of consumption — about 75% came from big metro cities and 25% from smaller cities and rural areas. This year, we expect that number to go up from 25% to 45%,” he said.
“We are also introducing social cricket-watching experience in a big way. So while someone is watching the match, they can actually invite friends and family and you [to] chat with them,” he said. Hotstar will also introduce ad targeting for the IPL season, that starts on March 23. “The one other thing which is quite a big deal and a global first is ad targeting at scale for live sports.”
With this, advertisers will be able to target 24 different cohorts during the live streaming. “Advertisers are going to be able to target certain demographic — age, gender, geographies — and to do it at such massive scale is pretty cool,” he added.