How IPL 2022 pushed growth for digital platforms

Due to the popularity of IPL, Hotstar saw a 12% growth in UVs from February to March 2022, reaching 141 million users (across Desktop and Mobile devices). This further grew by 2% in April 2022 to 144 million, according to Visakh Vijayakumar, Manager, Syndicated Client Insights, Comscore.

Vijayakumar wrote in a blog that with the playoffs and the final being played towards the end of May 2022, the numbers must have peaked in May 2022.

The popularity of the IPL can be seen not only with the surge in the traffic to the streaming partner (Disney+ Hotstar) but also across several other categories of digital properties including sponsors, fantasy sports platforms and sports news/information websites.

Vijayakumar shared that IPL also had millions of users playing fantasy league cricket on platforms like Dream11. Unique visitors to Dream11 grew by 115% from 11.6 million in February 2022 to 25 million in March 2022 to 32 million in April 2022. MPL on the other hand saw a 183% growth in UVs from February 2022 to March 2022, to reach 9.3 million.

The time spent on these platforms also saw a huge jump. Dream11 users spent almost 74 million minutes on the platform in April 2022, a 20% increase from March 2022 numbers of 61.5 million, which in turn was 128% higher than the time spent in February 2022. MPL also saw a 121% growth in times spent from 12.7 million minutes in February 2022 to 29 million minutes in March 2022, he wrote.

Sports News/information sites also witness growth in traffic, whether it’s to check the match scorecards and statistics or to read about the match analysis and news. Sites such as Cricbuzz, Sportskeeda, ESPNCricInfo and the actual IPLT20 sites started to see an increase in traffic from March 2022. Cricbuzz was the go-to source for IPL-related information with 40.2 million UVs in April 2022. These sites also saw a significant growth in engagement since the start of the tournament.

Vijayakumar said that the time spent by Cricbuzz users on the site increased by 121% from February 2022 to March 2022, while Sportskeeda.com and ESPNCricInfo saw a 65% and 45% growth in engagement, respectively.

With the power of the IPL to draw in an entire nation to watch the best cricketers in the world put on a show, sponsors are guaranteed to leave an imprint on the viewers’ minds. Vijayakumar commented that among the sponsors,  both RUPAY.CO.IN and CEAT.COM saw a spike in traffic in March 2022, thanks to their brand names and logos appearing several times on screens and at the stadiums every match.

The Gujarat Titans and the Lucknow Super Giants were the two new franchises in this year’s edition of the IPL. Vijayakumar shared that it is likely that the new team in Gujarat led to a 15% increase in UVs for Hotstar from February 2022 to March 2022 in Gujarat alone, which is higher than the country's growth rate of 12% for Hotstar for the same period. Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, only showed a 9.7% growth in viewership despite having a new team to cheer for. 

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