Disney Star to telecast 12 IPL matches on its free-to-air channel Star Utsav Movies
This is the first time that IPL will be aired on Free Dish
For the first time since buying the TV rights of the Indian Premier League five years ago, Disney Star this year will be telecasting 12 of the matches on its free-to-air channel Star Utsav Movies, e4m has learnt exclusively. This is the first time that IPL will be aired on Free Dish. The move is expected to give a big boost to Disney Star's viewership in the rural market.
When contacted, Disney Star confirmed the news, saying, “This year, for the first time, Star Sports will take 12 IPL games on FTA via its Star Utsav Movies channel.”
Explaining the idea behind the decision, a senior executive of the network said, “In taking select IPL games to FTA, we aim to give an unserved audience cohort the opportunity to sample the top-quality content proposition that Star Sports presently makes available only to its Pay TV subscribers. As income and aspiration levels grow among these 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).”
However industry sources add that this could also be Disney Star’s strategy to counter Viacom 18 Sports’ move to stream the tournament for free on Jio. For the first time in the history of IPL, the media rights have been sold to two different networks, and both the sides are leaving no stone unturned to attract advertisers and maximise the revenue.
Earlier in January, Sports18 announced that it will 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.
