425 brands advertised on JioStar for IPL 2025; 32 leveraged Nielsen for third-party validation

New Delhi: Over 425 brands, including 270 first-time advertisers across 40 categories, partnered with JioStar this IPL season, according to the ‘IPL 2025: A Year of Firsts’ report released by JioStar in partnership with Media Partners Asia (MPA).

32 brands from 9 categories leveraged third-party measurement from Nielsen. Earlier this year, JioStar partnered with Nielsen to introduce independent measurement on Hotstar, a move aimed at bringing greater transparency to digital ad performance, particularly in the context of live sports.

According to the report, the tournament reached a record 1.19 billion viewers, with 652 million on digital platforms (235 million on CTV + 417 million on mobile) and 537 million via television. The IPL Final alone drew 426 million viewers, comprising 189 million on TV and 237 million on digital.

JioStar highlighted in the report that 1 in every 17 people globally watched the IPL 2025 Final. It also noted that the average daily reach across TV and digital platforms during the tournament was twice the viewership of the Super Bowl, underscoring the IPL’s unmatched scale and global appeal.

JioHotstar, which streamed the tournament digitally, saw its subscriber base surge to 300 million, significantly narrowing the gap with Netflix’s global subscriber count of 301.63 million (as of December 2024). 

The platform also clocked 1.04 billion Android app downloads, a peak concurrency of 55.2 million, and 514 billion minutes of watch time across platforms during the season.

Notably, JioStar had just 50 million subscribers in February 2025, which skyrocketed to 280 million by May, coinciding with the start of the cricketing league, as reported in the media. 

Netflix added over 18 million subscribers globally in Q4 2024, reaching 301.6 million users across 190 countries.

The report also reveals a significant female audience participation, with 47% of Star Sports viewers being women, and 129 million tuning in via HD channels

The report highlighted significant growth in IPL’s regional language feeds, with Telugu viewership up by 87%, followed by Kannada (+65%), Tamil (+52%), Haryanvi (+47%), Bengali (+34%), and Hindi (+31%), underscoring the league’s deepening regional reach and audience localisation strategy.

The IPL media rights holder also introduced free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels dedicated to the tournament, further expanding accessibility for casual viewers and non-subscriber audiences.