Disney Star to attract more mass brands by putting IPL on FTA channel

In yet another move to target mass brands, this year Disney Star will be telecasting 12 of the matches on its free-to-air channel Star Utsav Movies, for the first time since buying the TV rights of the Indian Premier League five years ago.

e4m exclusively flashed the story on March 4.

This is the first time IPL will be aired on Free Dish and the move is expected to give a big boost to Disney Star's viewership in the rural market.

Sources at Star claim that the move aims to give an unserved audience cohort the opportunity to sample the quality content proposition that Star Sports presently makes available only to its Pay TV subscribers. “As income and aspiration levels grow among FTA viewers, Disney Star expects that many of them, based on their viewing experience of this content, will transition to Pay TV, helping this universe grow further from its current base of 168 million connections (BARC Data),” said an official.

However, industry sources add that this could also be Disney Star’s strategy to counter Viacom18 Sports’ move to streaming the tournament for free on Jio. Experts also see this as a strategy to increase their viewership numbers to attract brands catering to mass audiences.

“This will help them attract FMCG brands, which cater to audiences in tier two and three markets. However, the move will not make any difference to high-end or even mid-segment brands as the population that subscribes to FTA channels may not be big spenders,” said a media planner.

For the first time in the history of IPL, media rights have been sold to two different networks and both sides are leaving no stone unturned to attract advertisers and maximise the revenue.

“This year, Disney Star is taking a number of steps to grow its ad revenue and expanding the advertiser base by targeting both corporate and small & medium business (SMB) advertisers. Early last month they also announced selling their regional feed separately to small local advertisers. This is something they had not done before,” said another planner.

Earlier in January, Sports18 announced that it would stream IPL for free in 11 regional languages. The matches will be available free on the Jio app and that too in 11 different languages, including Bhojpuri, Tamil and Bengali.

Reacting to the same, Karan Taurani of Elara Capital claimed that the move is primarily on the back of viewership growth pressure that Star may have anticipated due to IPL being available free on Jio Cinema and due to a general decline in the Pay TV household base. “This is a good strategy by Star as it may keep the Pay TV household number intact, and more than compensate for the losses made by reduction in Pay TV households (annual loss of 3%, which is 5 million households), as against the addition of 35-40 million FTA households. This, in turn, will provide a competitive edge for Star vs Jio Cinema, and make total viewership reach possible towards 500 million, putting it on par with what Jio Cinema has been providing marketers,” he added.