IPL 2023 being paid or free on digital has no impact on TV viewership: Ajit Varghese

As the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 enters the third week, the battle between Disney Star and Reliance Jio for eyeballs and ad monies has intensified the TV vs Digital debate further. With this year being the first time when the media rights for the league has been split between two networks, the market is abuzz with claims and counterclaims about the viewership numbers on the two mediums. While it may still take some time for a clear picture to emerge, Ajit Varghese, Head of Network Ad Sales at Disney Star, has no doubt about TV scoring over digital when it comes to IPL. In a conversation with e4m Editor Naziya Alvi Rahman, Varghese asserts that IPL being paid or free on digital has no impact on TV viewership. According to him, TV would walk away with 75% of the ad revenue as IPL is all about community and family viewing.

Edited excerpts of the conversation

Our sources say you are holding back your inventory this time, unlike previous years when you would go full right at the start of the season. Is it being done on purpose or it is happening because of market conditions? How has the IPL been for you so far?

Overall, the industry has been going through a headwind for the last six months and it has nothing to do with IPL per se. You can see any sector or business, be it the start-up or e-commerce. This is visible across mediums and businesses. Additional factors are global headwinds leading to financial pressures. Also, the marketing calendars are much more spread out and not pre-decided in the way one wants. A lot of decisions are happening as we go and as we speak. Marketers are thinking on the go and spreading out investments. It has nothing to do with the medium. The key point here is that we have not seen any change in the marketing mix of the spends when it comes to Digital vs TV.

Also, there is a lot of negative narrative in the market about IPL this time. Sources in the industry say this has confused the marketers, leading some of them to adopt a wait & watch policy. Do you agree?

The negative commentary never came from us. We have only spoken about our achievements and our strength. We are not in the business of negativity. We feel every platform has its own importance. We are also in an ecosystem that sells sports on digital. The only piece of confusion in the market could be because of a lot of misleading data out there. We definitely believe that someone needs to ratify the confusion. I do feel clients want clarity. We are here to sell our TV story and not negate someone else’s story. 

A report last month claimed that Star India is likely to lose ground this IPL. It also claimed that the larger share of the ad revenue, up to 60%, is expected to go to digital and you may get just 40%. What do you have to say about it?

We look at IPL from three angles- consumer experience, the metrics that come after the IPL starts and the advertiser support.

If I talk of consumer experience per se digital versus digital itself, we have seen that digital going free has had no impact on television and I can give you data on all the three claims. We have not seen any shift in the TV vs digital mix, and nor has there been any change in the budgets. There are always clients who do digital more and there are clients who do TV more and that mix has been the same. The report that you are talking about looks completely exaggerated to me and probably doesn’t even have enough research or backing to the numbers they have claimed.

What is your estimate of the split of the ad revenue between TV and digital?

The range, as per our current analysis, is around 75% TV and 25% digital. We have done this analysis basis our data of previous years and after speaking with our agency partners and clients who are doing business with both. We have not seen any drastic shift at all. If you look at the BARC data, the TV ratings on the first day itself have gone up 31% compared to last year and the viewing time/engagement has gone up by 50%. The increase in viewing time is a clear indicator of consumer enjoying the experience. It shows the strength of the medium where people spend time with family and friends and watch it on a large screen. We believe that this game is all about community and family viewing. We have also seen the reach going up in double digits. These metrics reaffirm our confidence that IPL being paid or free on digital has no impact on TV viewership.

Your competitor has released reach numbers, which you, in a mailer, have countered with your 2019 numbers when IPL was streamed for free on Hotstar as well. Do you believe that multiple narratives are leading to confusion among marketers and agencies?

There have been lots of claims and counterclaims in the market about number of downloads of the app. I would love to clarify a few metrics there which allow us to track where these numbers are compared to previous year’s data and reality.

Let’s talk about platform reach. Even if I go by the public data that has been released claiming 10 crore in the first weekend, it is actually 26% lower than Hotstar’s 2019 numbers when we were showing it for free.

But, overall, digital is growing drastically across globe. How can it show a decline for IPL?

We are not questioning the overall growth of the digital universe. The point that I am talking about is the current IPL scenario. I don’t know the exact answer but it could be because of the change of the app. We have seen that consumers are still coming to Hotstar. On the opening day, we saw a huge number of downloads of Hotstar app since it was the IPL’s go-to destination for last four to five years.

Coming back to the metrics, we have also seen claims of watch time, which again is 25-26% lower than Hotstar in SVOD last year.

A lot of these data points show that the whole narrative of the landmark moment of more people watching it on digital has not yet happened.

Meanwhile, the experience of digital is available on social media. It’s all about app crashing, buffering and logging issues. This probably has dented the numbers as compared to previous year’s numbers. Also, again considering it’s a new app, a lot of shifting has not happened; people are used to seeing IPL on Hotstar. Thirdly, the number of app installed and download has not increased much. It has been claimed that 25 crore people downloaded the app (on the opening day) and another 50 crore over the weekend. But we have seen published sources and third-party data, and these numbers are nowhere close to the claims. It could be true that a lot of things they planned for hasn’t happened.

Disney Star has paid Rs 23,575 crore for the TV rights of IPL, which means you will be paying Rs 57.5 crore for each match, how do you plan to recover this money?

Markets go through cycles. At the end of the day, we don’t decide when a recession happens or a war takes place and what will be the implications of that. This is a five-year property that we have invested in. We are confident that spends on TV will continue and that’s the reason why we are so hopeful. As long as we can convince marketers about the strength of TV, I don’t see any reason to worry in future as well. 

For us, the most important factor is to ensure consumers have a great IPL experience on our medium. That’s our focus, and money will follow.