View From Asia: “The 2024 TATA IPL Report Card”

In his latest View From Asia column, Unmish Parthasarathi, the Singapore-based Founder of Picture Board Partners, Monetisation & Communications practice, shares insights from the recently concluded Indian Premier League.

The 17th edition of the Indian Premier League (officially called TATA IPL 2024) ended recently with the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) winning their third title.

For the under initiated, the IPL’s a cricket tournament played every March-May in India, involving 10 privately owned clubs who play 74-matches over eight weeks in over a dozen cities across India. Founded in 2008, the match format of the IPL is the Twenty20 – a shortened, three-hour version of the traditional one-day (six hour) 50-over format that was pioneered by the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003.

The IPL’s the most successful Twenty20 event in the world, with the best talent in the world on show – financed and fueled by media rights values that have exponentially grown to a 10x multiple since inception.

To give a European, or even global context, the IPL, as a commercial success, is akin to the English Premier League; the world’s most successful domestic football league.

The IPL’s media rights have grown 20% YoY with each match in the current cycle worth $15 Mn – the second highest globally, after the NFL, and exceeding the English Premier League (which admittedly has 5x the match volumes and a nine-month season duration compared to the two-month IPL)

A “back of the envelope” economic analysis of the IPL and the EPL (launched in 1992, a decade and a half before the IPL) stacks up to a ‘Perfect Storm’ scenario in both cases. For example, much like the EPL, the IPL has also consistently grown on the back of a media rights deal that financed access to the best talent, which further improved the product and set in motion a compounding effect.

In both cases, we have the confluence of a young audience, a TV friendly event format in an already popular sport with mass appeal, a smart group of administrators, ambitious media platforms in the Pay-TV and OTT space, and economic tailwinds. This creates a “must have” juggernaut with a proven product market fit that enjoys a loyal audience and high barriers to entry (or moats in investor speak!) for challengers.

In sum, my #TopFiveTakeaways from the 17th IPL are

1. Sponsorships

Also referred to as brand partnerships and different from TV ad buys, Sponsorships felt some head winds in 2024. 

The most frequently mentioned reason is the drying up of venture capital fueled marketing spends of recent years. Occasional references were also made to the elections coinciding, an occasion that saw over half a billion people voting in six weeks (April 19th-June 1st). 

But this is only half the answer since both on-ground and on jersey spends in Sport facing head winds is a global phenomena. It’s due mainly to being an analogue sales entitlement that doesn’t meet the digital and data related needs of the brand marketers. 

This is a global trend that is making its presence felt in India for the order time, and has been revealing as the tide went out on frothy, near-zero interest rate capital funding marketing budgets.

2. TV/OTT Media Consumptions

This year’s report card is a complex read of the tea leaves. 

For context, the 2023 season was the first year of a new media rights deal that sold two packages – concurrently – of broadcast and streaming. Back then, the respective winners of both these platform rights – Disney Star Sports and Reliance Jio – had been competitors. In January 2024, less than three months before the second season of the current year deal, the two platforms merged in a cash & stock deal for the Mouse House. 

In addition, the larger fact often ignored is that Reliance Jio, the dominant 4G telco with 400 Mn subscribers has marketed the IPL “for free” – or no subscriptions. This does not get away from that the telco makes it money from data. Hence the richer or more dense the video, the more data consumed on a per second basis. Upgrading the host broadcast to 4K, a video format that needs more bandwidth on streaming, was a smart move that’s been under player but very remunerative.

3. Host Broadcast Production 

Speaking of host broadcasting in 4K, what remains consistent with the IPL’s host broadcasts is its continued focus to place Fandom front & center. 

Disney Star Sports and Jio Cinema engaged over 150 commentators, notably 20% female, in a dozen languages across English, Hindi and 10 regional vernaculars (Marathi, Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Haryanvi). 

Jio Cinema also provided multi camera views for the fan to choose points of view to their liking as one more of a long list of featured functionalities that have empowered the fan community to remain engaged during and outside the live match window. 

Localisation by language at this scale has never been done before. Anecdotal evidence suggests its impact goes beyond sports consumption. The mass market appeal of the IPL, concentrated by the prime time telecast slots of 80% of the matches, has led to Bollywood – the Indian Hindi language cinema industry that’s second to Cricket in popularity and income – is now reticent to launch movies in the March to May window! 

4. Talent Takes Center Stage

The IPL’s ability to attract the best global talent – on and off the pitch – has been enabled by budgets are fixed for all franchises but growing proportionally as a function of the ballooning media rights dividends. 

The 2024 was especially notable for a new trend – a former winning captain proving himself as adept off the field as he had been on it. Gautam Gambhir, who twice led KKR to IPL titles, returned to the Calcutta franchise as Mentor and made two telling calls. First, he paid a record $3 Mn fee for Mitchell Starc; the Aussie showed his big match temperament to be Man of the Final. Gambhir then got West Indian Sunil Narine – who was more known for his bowling – to open the batting which had a devastatingly positive set of consequences!

The IPL has also been known to surface talent, and especially for players from non Indian countries who make a mark in India before being picked for their national team. Australia’s David Warner was the first instance of this trend a decade ago, who played in the IPL before donning the Baggy Green cap. 

The 2024 edition will be remembered for three other non-Indian players who announced themselves on the international stage. Jake Fraser-McGurk, a 22-year old Aussie was a late replacement, who scored 330 runs at a strike rate of 234. Tristan Stubbs, a 23-year-old South African, with a bargain purchase price of $60,000, was the tournament’s top finisher with a “final overs” strike rate of 297!!! And, 25-year-old Will Jacks secured a place with England for the ICC Twenty20 tournament, being played this month in Caribbean and US, with explosive performances that helped his IPL franchise, Royal Challengers Bangalore, make the play-offs. 

5. Format Changes | Player Substitution

The IPL needs to be credited for its many firsts.

These include promoting a plethora of female talent on-air as commentary, from almost a decade ago, in 2016. It’s expanded into vernacular language commentary for over half a billion who their Mother Tongue to English or even Hindi. It’s invested in Fan Parks, that visited 50 Indian cities besides the 14 that hosted IPL matches 

In over a decade of innovation, there seems to have been only one step that has been remiss – the Impact Player concept.

Introduced in 2023, the Impact Player option is meant to enhance Jeopardy – a key ingredient that makes Sport akin to unscripted drama, with its own plot lines and characters. All teams are allowed to make one substitution so long as he’s an Indian player unless less than the maximum quota of four overseas players has been used.

Public comments from last and present India captains suggests that the Impact Player concept may need to be revisited. The rationale being that, substitutions, in Cricket, reduces – rather than elevates – the degree of jeopardy unlike making the competition more intense as substitutions do in Football, Basketball or Rugby.

Either way, the IPL juggernaut promises to roll on and remain a success – on and off the field. In addition, its women’s edition, that preceded the men’s event by a month, enjoyed a strong second season – another positive trend that Cricket, not only in India but globally, shares with Football (Soccer).