Viacom18 executives have estimated that more than 550 million viewers will watch the week-long IPL games, giving a boost to the group's technology and internet ambitions.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's group will stream Indian Premier League cricket games for free, one of the world's most-watched sporting events in India to challenge Walt Disney Co and Amazon.com Inc, according to people familiar with the matter. is exercising its exclusive rights. Thriving media market.
Viacom18 Media Pvt, a joint venture between Paramount Global and Ambani's conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd, licensed IPL streaming rights last year for $2.7 billion, fending off rivals Disney and Sony Group Corp. Disney previously owned these rights, and used them to drive subscribers to its streaming service, Disney Hotstar.
Viacom18 is taking a different approach, offering games to as many people as possible to generate advertising sales, said the people, who declined to be identified because the move was not publicly announced. Free media services such as Google and Facebook generate billions of dollars in advertising sales in the country, and have been far more successful than paid premium products such as Netflix.
Viacom18 executives have estimated that more than 550 million viewers will watch the week-long IPL games, boosting the group's technology and internet ambitions, which range from online retail to entertainment. This year the series of matches, each of a relatively short three-hour duration, will begin on March 31 and run for approximately eight weeks. Viacom18 will allow users to watch any number of games for any length of time on any internet-connected device.
It's a familiar playbook for Reliance, which has offered mobile service at prices well below its competition, signed up hundreds of millions of customers and driven rivals out of business. Ambani's group owns Reliance Jio, the country's largest telecom operator by market share with close to half a billion customers. The five-year IPL contract gives it access like no other to cash in on a tournament described as the Super Bowl of cricket.
The price of cricket rights shot up last year as several media companies sought them to promote their nascent streaming businesses. Internet adoption in India is growing at a rocket pace, and global and domestic media giants look to the country as a catalyst to grow their subscriber base. Disney, which previously held the IPL streaming rights, lost the auction but won the TV broadcast rights by beating Sony. Amazon, another contender, ran out of bids at the last minute after completing initial auction paperwork.
Ambani won by paying almost three times what Disney had paid in the previous deal. In return, Disney paid even more—about $3 billion—for a traditional TV package. Ambani teamed up with Paramount, billionaire James Murdoch and former Hotstar chief Uday Shankar to bid for the IPL rights.
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