After the mega FIFA World Cup success, Mukesh Ambani's JioCinema has eyes set on IPL

With Argentina having clinched the FIFA World Cup, for the first time since 1986, the nation has been in party mode. Clearly, there is no better gift for Christmas as the football-fanatic folks live this moment with Messi and his team.

Back home in India, the interest in the game has been most interesting. With JioCinema airing the entire tournament free of cost, a whopping 32 million viewers were tuned into the final between the winners and defending champions, France. A game that went all the way to a penalty shootout only helped the cause. The overall numbers for India are quite impressive – over 110 million viewers across the matches, 40 billion minutes of watch time between Sports18 (the television channel owned by Viaccom18, a joint venture between Network18 and Paramount Global) and JioCinema, an app that is downloaded free. Network18 is a media group owned by Reliance Industries.

It only sets ups the stage for next year’s Indian Premier League (IPL), for which Viacom18

bagged the digital rights in June. In a keenly contested auction, it paid Rs 23,758 crore for digital rights for a five-year period (2023-27), while the television piece was retained by Disney Star. According to Uday Sodhi, Senior Partner, Kurate Digital Consulting, JioCinema has done the right thing by getting the distribution and reach right before the IPL.

“That is a great idea and now, it has access to data, invaluable information with respect to consumer profiles and a sound understanding of technology. They are very well-poised at this point,” he says. There were issues on the quality of streaming live the day the FIFA World Cup kicked off in Qatar. “The JioCinema app has performed quite well in handling many more simultaneous users than normal. The technical glitches should be sorted out by the IPL,” thinks Balu Nayar, former MD of IMG and a key architect of the IPL.

From a digital standpoint, JioCinema, which, through its group has the largest mobile subscriber base and a significant broadband play as well, has already managed to secure very useful information on its consumers. Sodhi says that is a huge strategic advantage when it comes selling to potential advertisers. “In fact, the most expensive cost of the story is customer acquisition and they have done that by offering Jio Cinema free of cost. Now, it is very much possible to charge for the service,” he explains. Hotstar, owned by Disney Star, did something similar with the IPL when they held the rights between 2017-22. “Plus, with Voot (Viacom18’s OTT service), and the success of the FIFA World Cup, it opens up many options in terms of where to air the IPL. It is a good situation to be in," Sodhi adds.

The question is where will the IPL now be aired. Nayar is clear that it only makes sense to combine these apps into a superapp. “I expect that work on this front would have been initiated. That would be the best way to aggregate the current app downloads, since that is currently fragmented," he says.

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