Viacom18 likely to score more than Disney Star in IPL ad revenue game

With just a few days to go before the start of the country’s biggest cricketing extravaganza, the Indian Premier League (IPL), Disney Star, which has retained the TV rights for the tournament, is locking horns with Viacom18, which has won the league’s digital rights, to grab a larger share of the Rs 4,500-crore advertising pie, which remains more or less at the same level as last year.

Sources say that Disney Star has already closed deals with 11 key sponsors and over 60 other advertisers, including Coca-Cola, Pepsico, the Tata group, Asian Paints, Dream11, mobile device-maker Vivo, and so on. Negotiations are on with a few others as well. According to the sources, the company is hoping to garner between Rs 2,000 crore and Rs 2,400 crore in revenues.  

But Viacom18 is giving Disney Star a run for its money. Sources say that it has roped in around 700-750 advertisers across the country and has tied up with Google Ads and US-based tech start-up Moloco to source advertisements on their behalf with a focus on small and medium businesses. The company will leverage the fact that it has an unlimited inventory that it can cash in on, unlike in TV, where the inventory is limited.

Media planners say the ad market is clearly under pressure, so the pie is not expected to be at the same levels as the previous IPL season. But Viacom18 (which is streaming the IPL on JioCinema) will be able to leverage around Rs 100-150 crore that the Reliance Group will be spending to promote its 5G services and the launch of its FMCG products in the country.

They also point out that many big advertisers like Tatas, Pepsi and Coke are buying inventory in both digital and TV. The difference is in the amount of money they put in. Clearly, some of the advertisers who were putting in big bucks last time, such as Byju’s, are not doing so this time around.      

Media planners expect Viacom18 to mop up over Rs 2,000 crore in advertising revenues. In fact, it could grab nearly a 60 per cent share of the ad pie (the internal target is to hit 70 per cent). If it achieves that number, it would lead to a major shift, since hitherto 70-80 per cent of the advertising money used to go to television, and the rest to digital.

 That is because Disney Star, which had the rights to both TV and digital, focused only on a subscription model for IPL on its OTT platform. Viacom18 has disrupted the model by making it free, and driven only by advertising.    

Research agency Media Partners Asia (MPA), which is based in Hong Kong, projects that IPL’s total advertising pie (TV and digital) will be anything between $500 million (Rs 4,115 crore) and $600 million (Rs 4,900 crore). However, the agency says that the skew towards digital will be significant. Based on their discussions with media buyers, they say it will account for 60 per cent share of the total pie.

According to MPA’s estimates, JioCinema will make over $300-330 million (Rs 2,400-2,700 crore) in ad sales, while Disney Star will see a sharp fall in ad revenue — $200-220 million (Rs 1,800 crore) — half of the $442 million (Rs 3600 crore) which it achieved last year.

MPA believes what has clouded the minds of agency and advertising mavens is the sharp fall in IPL viewership, which sank to 229 million last year, down from 267 million the year before.