Despite free streaming, IPL on digital fails to meet even 4-year-old benchmarks

Digital streaming app JioCinema faces a harsh reality check in the ongoing Indian Premier League across various metrics. Claimed metrics for IPL 2023 on digital indicate that despite free streaming, the performance fails to come close to the numbers from previous editions.

Platform Reach: The reach for the opening weekend on digital too has seen a significant drop of 26% compared to IPL on digital in 2019 when it was free for streaming. The opening weekend in 2019 recorded a reach of 13.5 crore, whereas JioCinema recorded a paltry reach of 10 crore for the same duration this year.

Peak Concurrency: Another key measure of digital viewership – Peak concurrency adds to the decline of IPL on digital as the claimed opening match concurrency of 1.6 crore this year couldn’t surpass the 1.86 crore concurrent viewers witnessed on digital in 2019.

Daily Active Users: As per DATA.AI, a staggering 40% drop has been witnessed in the daily active users for the digital streaming app for the first two days of IPL this year in comparison to 2022. The daily active users in 2022 clocked 6.1 crore compared to merely 3.6 crore in 2023.

Watch-time: The watch time for the opening match on digital this year has dropped 26% compared to last year. While the watch time in 2022 was 77 minutes, IPL on digital in 2023 witnessed a steep fall with just 57 minutes spent by viewers. Infrastructural barriers coupled with cost of data continue to deter users from watching live matches unless it is for catch-up content or viewers are in transit. To make it worse, app-related issues such as buffering, playback errors, random muting of commentary and incorrect mapping of camera angles has made basic aspects of the viewer experience troublesome.

Daily Contests – The Final Bait for Viewers: From enticing viewers into new features, the digital streaming app has taken to inducing viewers with a daily contest to prop up downloads and engagement on the app. The move unsurprisingly has come only after not being able to meet viewership expectations on digital. Industry watchers are of the view that the likelihood of the contest influencing viewership and app engagement is extremely low considering the bait will only entice viewers to log in during the contest while continuing to watch live action on TV.

While the start of IPL on digital this season has been underwhelming, the viewership for the mega event on TV has grown sharply across key metrics like ratings, reach and time spent per viewer. The barriers to scalability of IPL on digital continue to mar both viewer experience and overall viewership of the tournament whereas as per reports, TV has onboarded over 20 brands since the opening day of the league.

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