The BARC television viewership data for the first 10 matches of the TATA IPL 2023, released yesterday, was a continuance of the traditional strength of Linear Broadcast from across the IPL’s past 15 ‘innings’, and Sanjog Gupta, Head – Sports at Disney Star, is confident that the record-breaking initial television viewership numbers from Star Sports’ presentation of IPL 23 will only grow to set newer records, which he believes will be through greater viewer-delight with content, and advertiser-delight with ever better numbers and quality of audiences. Pavan R Chawla caught up with Sanjog for a discussion on the numbers and more. Read on.
What are the headlines you’re seeing in the BARC Data from the first 10 matches of Tata IPL2023”
There are three big ones. One that the demand for IPL on TV is more robust and more compelling as ever before, which is evident from the fact that the reach over the first 10 matches is up by 25% — the highest it’s ever been, with the exception, of course, of those two COVID years when people were locked down at home and were watching TV.
The second headline is that 31 crore people have watched the first 10 games of IPL 2023, which puts it at par with the highest ever which was 31 crore in 2019.
Basically, this is the best opening for IPL in all its editions other than those two editions I just mentioned.
And the third headline is the sheer extent of engagement on TV, which is 6,230 crore minutes of watch time confirming our belief that the big screen provides the most immersive, aggregative viewing experience.
And then there’s something more — a direct comparator for TV and digital, and is the only comparable data that has been published or is publicly known – the peak concurrency. The number of people watching at any point of time, together, over the first eight days of IPL 2023, was 5.6 crores on TV. This number is again the highest ever for the first eight days of IPL in any edition of IPL other than those two COVID editions. And that happens to be more than 3x the peak concurrency claimed on digital for the same matches, which is at 1.8 crores.
And how have Star Sports’ language channels fared?
The numbers have just come in, and we haven’t done a deep-dive yet, but I can share some headline stuff that we’ve been able to extract from the data. One: The markets North India have significantly outperformed, and in fact, some beyond our expectations.
One is Uttar Pradesh. UP has shown significant growth over the last year. And while as we haven’t looked at historical data for UP, this will probably be one of the best years of viewership for UP. This is largely powered by the organic factor of the IPL, and also some stimulus that we injected.
See, the organic factor was Lucknow Supergiants, who had never played at home, getting to play at home for the first time. And that does two things. One, obviously, fandom for the local franchise gets activated. And the other, more important thing, is that the other popular franchises, like a CSK, an MI or an RCB travel to Lucknow to play LSG, and drive local interest in the league, because they’re all extremely popular teams.
So, there is renewed vigor and excitement around the IPL in the state because the league is being held in Lucknow and there are expectations from the team. Beyond this, the stimulus we provided was to identify UP as P1 growth market for our marketing campaign. We tied up with Lucknow Supergiants to promote and market the IPL in the state. And in addition to that, we signed up K L Rahul as our brand ambassador, because fundamentally, we believe that fans watch heroes. And fans build their affinity for teams based on the heroes that play for those teams. And that, I think has acted as a stimulus for local fandom for the league to get activated.
You also did something that supported your audience strategy a great deal. With the FTA Star Utsav Movies. Tell us about it.
Yes, that’s been an other big factor – the opening up of the sampling that we’ve driven for IPL on Star Utsav Movies. That has helped in putting IPL on screens that didn’t have IPL or didn’t have access to IPL till now. We did that to get them to sample IPL so that they become IPL fans and drive consideration for Star Sports amongst an underserved audience. And this was a big factor in UP which has FTA households.”
Which other regional market did very well for you?
We will share more detailed data from the regional scene, but Karnataka is another market that has shown promising growth for Tata IPL 2023 on Television.
he Karnataka story is largely driven by, One: The availability of Star Sports 1 Kannada in the market, which has grown significantly. We’ve seen a significant pickup for subscriptions of Star Sports 1 in Karnataka, and with that the visibility, the opportunity to watch IPL on Star Sports has gone up in the Karnataka market.
Another market driver there has been the dedicated Kannada feed which now has almost 70% of the viewership in the state.
And the third and final factor — and you have to give it to him for being the biggest sports brand in the country — is Virat Kohli. That we have a tie-up with him and he’s one of stars fronting IPL on Star, obviously drives his fans in the state and fans of RCB to come and watch IPL on Star. So those have been the factors for growth in Karnataka.
A natural corollary now, considering all that you’ve shared with me so far, is: What is the quality of viewers Star Sports has been offering to advertisers, and going by the BARC data so far, how do you expect the viewership numbers to grow, which they should, logically, because the contest will intensify with all teams seeking to get the maximum points before the elimination kicks in. But tell me about your optimism and about what can advertisers look forward to.
Let me answer that in two parts: One, to answer your question on quality of viewers separately from our optimism around the future over the next few weeks. So in terms of quality of viewers, we at Star Sports are very clear we are serving a mix of premium audiences, along with audiences at scale to advertisers. And it was largely with a view to drive premium audiences that we launched two new HD channels just before TATA IPL 2023 started: Star Sports 1 Tamil and Star Sports 1 Telugu.
So we continue to stay focused on delivering the core TG, which is male 15 plus AB urban, which advertisers obviously put a premium on. Viewership in this demographic has also increased by nearly 25% as per latest BARC data compared to the previous edition.
Plus so many games, right in the beginning, have been huge already…
Yes, that’s the second part of it, I think the best thing which makes us as optimistic as we are about the TATA IPL 2023. See what happened over the last four days… Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, each day we had a last-ball thriller! And that just means that the level of competition is only going to intensify and the quality of battles, as well as the scale of fandom for heroes, will only grow.
IPL is a tournament which keeps growing in its capacity to engage and entertain viewers. We have had four last ball thrillers over the last four days which shows how evenly matched the teams are. We have a great mix of legendary icons like Virat, Dhoni and Rohit returning to form while new, young players are bursting on to the scene. And lastly, the fervour for tickets keeps growing, especially in cities like Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kolkata. These are really positive indicators for the continuing growth of the league and its viewership.
I think it’s also appropriate to give BCCI and key decision-makers in the board, a lot of credit for managing the IPL ecosystem in a way that it produces a Cricket competition of such high quality. And even beyond that, being supportive of the belief that the tournament of this scale still has headroom for further growth.
So what are the pillars of your audience strategy?
Our strategy always has been to widen the funnel of fans and make Cricket more accessible while also obsessively serving the fans to drive engagement.
The first part seeks to bring new viewers from different demographics to come and engage deeply with IPL. We want to create a pull for audience cohorts of casual fans and event watchers to feel a deep desire to watch IPL. We want to them to ‘Join the Game’. At the other end of the spectrum, we are focussed on enhancing the viewing experience through the power of our storytelling, bringing fans closer to their heroes and serving new features which can excite core fans.
So we have associated with someone like a Ranveer Singh, who happens to be a huge sports fan, to be our sutradhar, to help build a bridge with casual fans or event watchers who flirt with IPL. We get him to weave compelling narratives around the IPL and why IPL is as exciting as it is to those fans who don’t have a deep connection to the tournament.”
In our bid to get non-fans and casual fans to sample fans, we are bringing Salman Khan over the weekend to ‘Join the Game’. He comes in as a guest and a fan. It’s a really interesting activation which sees him in a completely new avatar: he’s telling kids stories from IPL which are his favourite. And the whole idea is: can we get his fans as excited about the IPL as they are about his films?
So, again, like I said, we are looking to deliver core cricket viewers and deepen our engagement with them. But at the same time, we are looking to bring together audience cohorts who are on the periphery. We are serving the largest aggregation of audience by customising experiences for specific profiles of audiences. And this is only possible when you are constantly striving to serve fans. That’s the audience strategy.
And you’re deploying stars and the activations, including the latest one with Salman Khan, because, in my view, if movies are a passion in India and Cricket is a religion, you’re actually getting the top stars of both spaces sort of converging for the presentation, which will fuel fandom.
… with storytelling at the center of it. I think the important thing is they’re not coming just with the intention of promoting their movies. Like the association with Ranveer as IPL Sutradhar doesn’t have anything to do with any of his movies. He doesn’t have any of his movies releasing.
Ranveer genuinely loves the game and we’ve brought him on board because we want him, as a huge fan of IPL, to speak with his fans in an authentic tone, telling them ‘this is what makes me a fan of IPL, why don’t you come and try it?’
Sanjog, brand custodians and media buyers are smart, wise, calculating, as well they need to be. Now, TV has BARC as a third party that verifies and provides the data it does as currency for media buying. What is your view of the absence of third-party-verified data for digital users and views? What kind of verification of data can marketers use to guide their ad-budget investments correctly across digital? Since every digital streaming platform, Hotstar included, is a walled garden, what can media buyers refer to for guidance? Can the streamers, some day, bring in leaders like Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and Comscore? Like Netflix has already signed up with IAS and DoubleVerify. What’s your view on that?
I think that’s a question best posed to agencies which are evaluating the ROIs on potential spend and assessing deliveries associated with their investment. Claimed data has its own issues. And, like you said, there are independent sources of data available, such as App Annie. But there needs to be some accepted currency that is universally acknowledged by agencies and advertisers to evaluate advertising opportunities.
Because frankly, in the absence of a consistent, transparent and verified currency system, how would you actually evaluate a claim? Or how do you actually evaluate the potential impact of a strategy or of your messaging, if you may not even be reaching the intended audience despite perhaps being made to believe otherwise?
You understand this just as well as I do since you have seen this evolution as it happened with TV too – all stakeholders including the key players, clients and industry bodies will have to come together to say: this is something which serves the interests of the industry.
I hope that what you said happens, and another hope I have is that as far as the IPL is concerned, this entire narrative of ‘TV or Digital’ we’re seeing changes back to ‘TV and Digital’. What’s your view?
I just think it’s being made out to be too much of a zero-sum game. It doesn’t have to be. You know, there is enough headroom for growth of sport, and for its viewership in this country irrespective of the platform that it is growing on. Rising tide lifts all boats and if all of us, together, can raise the affinity for sport to the next level, then everyone gains.
If a fan chooses to watch a certain part of the match on a screen that is more conveniently available to him or her and then chooses to move to a screen which offers a better experience resulting in his or her overall engagement with the sport going up – everyone gains, right?
The big and the tiny screen are and can be even more complementary, and that way, everyone benefits — the platforms benefit, the federation benefits, every stakeholder in the ecosystem benefits.
So, gains for one don’t necessarily have to come at the cost of the other platform. And I just think this whole approach of portraying something in poor light or in some sense pulling down with disinformation, trying to prove that one is superior to the other, doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
At the end of the day, consumers, fans, viewers, whatever you may call them, you know, they vote with their attention and they vote for what they want to watch. Yes, multiple platforms compete for their attention but even competition brings out the best in the competitors, and eventually serves the consumer.
Consumer choice can be based on multiple considerations – convenience, comfort, habit, ease of access etc.
So at times, the strongest consideration may be convenience – for example, if I’m coming back home after a long day at work and the match has started and I really want to watch it, I can watch it only on the mobile screen. But when I get home, I want the comfort of the seamless, lean-back, immersive experience that the big screen offers, like a certain service in its own part, for enjoyment of a contest my family or friends too are equally passionate about!
TV and Digital platforms have undeniably unique attributes. Digital (mobile) by its nature is a ‘higher frequency, lower continuous engagement’ platform so consumers will visit often (“views”) for relatively shorter sessions. TV delivers 40-50% higher engagement (TSV) and higher concurrent viewers. Aggregation on TV will be higher due to longer sessions and continuous inflow of new viewers. Both have their own unique places in the media basket.
So it’s not a zero sum game at all. All stakeholders should come together to grow sport because if the sport grows then everyone gains.
That’s what you’re wishing for, Sanjog. What’s the reality like, considering now ‘both sides’ are targeting the large number of advertisers who are still hedging their bets as they’re watching the ratings and checking out how the games and trajectories are shaping up before opening up their ad spends for spot buys on handpicked games.
Both sides are competing for ad dollars and should hope that the pie of advertising grows. However, the deployment of data and misinformation or perhaps even disinformation, in an attempt to confuse advertisers or deliberately put doubts in advertisers’ minds, just to ensure that the other platform doesn’t get the ad dollars, is value destructive. An advertiser choosing to spend less or stay away altogether means loss for the industry.
Right, so, sum it up for me. On the back of the Star Sports’ showing per BARC Data on the first 10 games, and all the initiatives you’ve been rolling out, what kind of performance, ratings, value-delivery to M&E ecosystem stakeholders do you hope to deliver?
At the cost of sounding repetitive, the teams working on IPL at Disney Star are obsessed with serving fans. And our endeavour is not about securing achievements but about believing in the process. We want to be better with each passing day. We want to be creative and keep innovating. We want to make magic and create micro-moments of awesomeness all through our coverage. We want to keep recruiting new viewers and find new ways of engaging existing viewers. We want to learn from our mistakes but more importantly, make them to begin with, as we strive to do new things. We are just getting started!
Don’t get me wrong! We enjoy being as successful as we have been but we’d rather focus on raising the bar for ourselves in what we do than obsess over outcomes.
So, as I said, we are constantly raising the bar and will continue to deliver an engaging, entertaining and seamless viewing experience. We are confident that viewership on Star Sports is on a strong growth trajectory and will set new records. We have always aspired to deliver greater viewer-delight through our coverage, and advertiser-delight through the combination of exposure, attention and salience for their brands.
And what fills me with optimism more than anything else is the enthusiasm and enterprise of our teams, which strive day in and day out to bring the most compelling viewing experience to crores of fans.
What makes me ‘believe’ is the love and support we have received from our partners and our collaborators, who have reiterated their commitment to our cause of growing sports fandom and have ‘chosen’ Star Sports.
What has us excited is the prospect of playing a part in shaping the way fandom for Cricket in particular and Sports in general is expressed in our country.