IPL 2025 is India’s most monetised sporting event ever: JioStar’s Sanjog Gupta

New Delhi: With a reach of 1.19 billion viewers across platforms and record-breaking performance in both advertising and subscription revenue, IPL 2025 has emerged as the most monetised sporting event in Indian history, according to Sanjog Gupta, CEO – Sports & Live Experiences, JioStar.

Speaking during a fireside chat at the APOS Summit in Bali on June 25, Gupta framed the success of IPL 2025 as more than a milestone in Indian cricket; it signalled the rise of a new media consumption economy, anchored in technology, regionalisation, and hyper-personalised experiences.

“India's growing influence in sport is nothing but a reflection of India's growing significance on the global stage, driven by a strong consumption-oriented economy. This IPL, not only have we reached a billion viewers across platforms, we have also managed to make this IPL the most monetised edition of the event and also the most monetised sporting event ever in India across advertising and subscription revenue,” Gupta said.

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).

According to sources, JioStar closed the IPL 2025 season with ad revenues between Rs 4,800 crore and Rs 4,900 crore, surpassing last year’s performance.

Investing over $500 million to grow Indian sports

Gupta further said, “Over the last decade and a half, Star and now JioStar, has been the biggest private investor in Indian sport and in Indian media and entertainment. Largely with the mission to build what we believe can be a media and entertainment economy, but more than that, a media consumption economy, which is much larger in scale than anything that could have been imagined.”

In 2022, Disney Star, now JioStar, secured the television rights for IPL 2023–27 at Rs 23,575 crore, while Reliance-backed Viacom18 bagged the digital rights for Rs 20,500 crore. Following Disney’s sale of Star India to Reliance in 2024, the merged entity was branded as JioStar, combining Viacom18 and Disney Star under one umbrella.

Reflecting on JioStar's broader commitment beyond rights acquisition, Gupta added, “While numbers around acquisition prices for sports rights tend to be thrown around a lot, what at times gets missed is the sheer investment that a network such as ours has made to grow those properties by way of marketing, by way of production, by way of investment in technology and that over the last decade and a half exceeds $500 million. That is outside of what we paid for the acquisition of rights.”

JioHotstar’s hybrid strategy drives mass adoption

In February 2025, exactly three months after the merger, JioCinema and Hotstar were integrated to form JioHotstar. Around the same time, JioHotstar introduced a subscription model, triggered when its advanced algorithm identified a viewer as ‘loyal’ based on different stages of their viewing journey. While the platform continues to offer free content for sampling, the new strategy aims to convert high-affinity viewers into paying subscribers.

Gupta credited the platform’s hybrid subscription strategy, offering free entry but tiered access to deeper content, as a key driver of adoption.

He explained in detail, “Our mission wasn't to incrementally change the landscape; it was to completely shift the way consumers perceive paying for content and also, over a period of time, attribute value to the entertainment needs they have. The subscribers are on the platform and not just on IPL, and it started with an interesting hybrid subscription strategy, which allowed everyone to come onto the platform for free. So it's not pay at the gate; we're not trying to keep people out and have them pay before they can consume.”

He said further, “The model is based on a real-life example of how you shop, which is you go into a mall or a store, you sample enough and more of what you may want to look at and then choose to pay for deeper engagement—which in that case is purchase of an item.”

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). 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.

Gupta underscored that JioStar doesn’t view sport as a standalone vertical but as a powerful funnel for platform growth. “We believe sports serves as a recruitment funnel to bring in viewers and fans at scale, who then can be taken on a journey on a platform, which could entail a live event, a Hindi entertainment show, or it could entail one of our new originals which is marketed on the back of a big sporting event, and a recent example of that is the returning season of Criminal Justice, which benefited significantly by launching in the last week of IPL.”

Growing EPL, professionalising kabaddi: A multi-sport vision

The CEO also spotlighted JioStar’s continued push to broaden India’s sports palette, growing the English Premier League 3.5x in viewership over five years via regionalisation, and professionalising kabaddi to make it a year-long proposition.

“We don’t want to be known for a single piece of content or a single content genre, and that applies to sport as well. We have looked to grow the English Premier League significantly over the last five years. In fact, over the last five years, the viewership for the English Premier League across our platforms has grown almost 3.5x.”

He continued, “Largely on the back of localisation efforts where we've taken Premier League deeper into the Indian sports ecosystem than ever before by producing it in languages meant for regions, which have an affinity for football.”

Talking about Pro Kabaddi League, Gupta said, “We've professionalised it and continue to invest in it to build it as India's second most favourite sport. It already is the second biggest league in the country, but our objective with it is for the sport itself to grow and become a year-long proposition instead of being a two to three-month league.”

Gupta also outlined how sports content uniquely activates all four segments of the digital media economy.

“The digital media economy is in four segments: attention (reaching the consumer), passion (getting the consumer to care), affiliation (making the consumer loyal), and action (getting the consumer to act)—no other content genre better activates all four economic segments than live sports.”

Five forces powering India’s media consumption boom

He concluded by framing the broader cultural and economic forces driving India’s media consumption boom.

“Growth in media consumption is powered by:

• Accelerated digitisation: ubiquity of devices and access to data
  
  
• Consumer-focused enterprise: starting with free/hybrid subscription models
  
  
• Technology innovation: dynamic bit-rate management to address poor data connectivity for mobile users
  
  
• Upward socio-economic mobility: 300 million-strong middle class
  
  
• Cultural context: a deepening desire for individual expression, balanced with communal belonging.”