IPL: Disney Star looks to close advertising deals worth Rs 4,300 crore

With the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament set to kick off on Saturday, Disney Star expects to close advertising deals worth Rs 4,300 crore, including both digital and linear TV, according to sources in the know.

The higher revenues has been assisted partly due to a 10 per cent overall increase in rates as well as a hike in the overall inventory due to the increase in the number of matches by 20 per cent from 60 to 74 with the addition of two more franchisees taking the number of teams to 10. In the last edition of the IPL, it had earned around Rs 3,300-3,500 crore as advertising revenue. A Disney Star spokesperson declined to comment on the issue.  

Sources say that while most of the inventory on Hotstar, its OTT channel, has been sold, around 15 per cent of linear TV inventory is still available. A part of this will be sold at the last moment as spots and it expects to charge a premium.

However, last-minute negotiations are still on with advertisers and many are waiting to gauge the response on the first weekend before they take the plunge.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had some impact on regular cricket advertisers – these include the top tyre companies that will be absent. The reason is that their raw material costs have shot up because of the war. Even most fast-moving consumer goods companies are going slow because of the rise in prices.

This has, however, not deterred new advertisers like social e-commerce platform Meesho and electric scooter maker Ather Energy, among others. IPL ad rates have hiked this year by around 10 per cent for a 10-second slot and some slots were sold at a peak of Rs 18 lakh for select matches, an increase of over 25 per cent compared with the previous edition. In the last IPL, which was held in two phases, peak rates hit around Rs 14.5 lakh.

Most advertisers expect a larger viewership this year because this year the matches will be held at one go, unlike last year when it was held in two phases, which led to viewer fatigue.

Besides, the two new teams located in Lucknow and Ahmedabad could translate to an incremental increase in viewers. The growing enthusiasm was reflected in the fact that it was kick started with a successful mega auction that saw one of the highest brand participation.

The auction witnessed over 40 per cent increase in overall consumption minutes on TV — 3.6 billion minutes, compared to 2.5 billion minutes in 2018. Over 50 million viewers tuned in for the auction for the first time. Even on Disney+ Hotstar, the peak concurrency for the mega auction was 2.18 million.

Disney+ Hotstar has roped in 18 sponsors including Dream11, which has come onboard as the co-presenting sponsor, with Tata and Samsung as the ‘co-powered by’ sponsors. Associate sponsors include a long list of start-ups like Zepto, CRED, Pristyn Care, and Swiggy, apart from L’Oreal, RuPay, AMFI, Parle Agro (Appy Fizz), ABFRL (Peter England), Amazon Pay.