IPL hits new high on Star India's Hotstar with record 267 million viewers

Star India’s video streaming platform Hotstar, which has also been home to the Vivo Indian Premier League (IPL) on digital since 2015, registered a viewership of 267 million viewers in the first three weeks of this year’s IPL.

As a result, the platform has already surpassed digital viewership of 202 million viewers (for the entire season). The 12th edition of the IPL started on March 23 and concludes on May 12. The tournament is being telecast on multiple channels on the Star India TV network across eight languages, in addition to live streaming on Hotstar.

In the three weeks since the 2019 edition of the IPL launched, Hotstar also set a global live streaming record with a concurrency of 12.7 million viewers during the Royal Challengers Bangalore v/s Mumbai Indians match on March 28. With this, the platform broke its own previous record of 11.2 million concurrent viewers who watched an India v/s New Zealand T20 match. 

The streaming platform also witnessed 2x growth in watch time over the same period last year. The engagement on cricket on the platform also led Hotstar to reach 300 million active monthly users recently. 

Concurrency refers to the number of people watching an event, an IPL match in this case, on Hotstar at the same time.

The increasing popularity of IPL on Hotstar is the result of tech innovations the platform has rolled out. This year, for the first time ever, Hotstar has introduced social cricket-watching experience through which irrespective of their location, viewers have the opportunity to invite their friends and family to the platform, watch the matches, and participate in the Watch ’N Play game together. Viewers can compete and see where they stand against their friends and family through the new social leaderboard.

Commenting on the records achieved, Varun Narang, chief product officer, Hotstar, said, “The remarkable rate at which the viewership has grown over the years is testament to the audience pull that Vivo IPL enjoys. On the back of this, Hotstar continues to break records by raising the bar in reinventing the sporting experience for millions of Indians. These staggering numbers in just three weeks signify the platform’s immense reach and scale, as well as our technological ability to deliver an uninterrupted, immersive cricket watching experience for consumers.”

The IPL’s viewership on TV grew 21 per cent over 2018 in the first two weeks of the current season, while the reach of the tournament for the same period was 345 million.

Over the boundary

• In the three weeks since the 2019 edition of the IPL launched, Hotstar also set a global live streaming record with a concurrency of 12.7 million viewers during the Royal Challengers Bangalore v/s Mumbai Indians match on March 28
• With this, the platform broke its own previous record of 11.2 million concurrent viewers who watched an India v/s New Zealand T20 match