TATA IPL 2024 records biggest opening day ever with 17 crore viewers

IPL 2024: The 17th season of TATA IPL witnessed a record-breaking Opening Day. Over 16.8 crore unique viewers watched the broadcast of TATA IPL 2024 on Disney Star. Day 1 of TATA IPL registered a watch-time of 1276 crore minutes – the highest ever for the opening day of any IPL season.

The ongoing season of TATA IPL also witnessed the highest-ever peak TV concurrency for an IPL Opening Day, with 6.1 crore viewers watching the broadcast simultaneously on the Disney Star network. A Star Sports spokesperson said, “This is a monumental achievement, made possible by fans’ love for Star Sports and an unwavering commitment of the network to ‘serving fans’.

"This growth is a reaffirmation of the incomparable capacity of Live Cricket to aggregate audiences on TV and provides a blockbuster start to the tournament. We will continue to enrich the magic of one of the world’s biggest sporting events to take forward the launch momentum and deliver unprecedented viewership," the spokesperson added.

The star-studded opening day saw Navjot Singh Sidhu's return to the commentary box joining Indian stars like Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth. The day also witnessed debuts of Steve Smith and Stuart Broad, who joined legends Brian Lara, Matthew Hayden, Kevin Pietersen, Jacques Kallis and Dale Steyn in presenting TATA IPL 2024.

CSK’s former stars Ambati Rayudu, Murali Vijay, L Balaji and Subramaniam Badrinath along with IPL champions Vinay Kumar and Venugopal Rao were at the forefront of Disney Star’s regional feeds in 9 languages.

Many national and regional celebrities as well as fan-favourite presenters and content creators showed up on the Opening Day, complimenting the ensemble of 120 cricketers.