Anil Jayaraj, the CEO of Viacom18 Sports, revealed that the 2023 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) garnered a record-breaking 449 million viewers including 120 million connected TV consumers on its platform, while speaking at the RCB Innovation Lab’s Leaders Meet India event that concluded on November 30 in Bengaluru.
Advocating for an AI and digital-driven future for sports broadcasting in India, Jayaraj said, “There is nothing of the scale of IPL anywhere in the world. The paid TV universe in this country is expected to be about 100 million so for us to pick 120 million users on connected TV was quite remarkable in year one. Technology is going to make a major change as far as the digital landscape goes. Digital is where the innovation seems to be happening, especially in India with the number of mobile connections, 4G phones, data, and the pure behaviour around linear viewing interactively. The use of technologies like AI will dramatically change our production of content and automation.”
RCB Innovation Lab’s Leaders Meet India brought together leaders from various sectors of the sports industry to discuss and explore the dynamics of leadership in the evolving landscape of sports.
With a significant emphasis on promoting women’s sports, Jayaraj dived into the Women’s Premier League’s (WPL) interest among viewers, advertisers, and investors.
“What we have seen significantly is that the interest (in WPL), the crowd enthusiasm was phenomenal. The key thing for us was also the quality of production that BCCI put out. For advertisers, it gives them an opportunity to target a very different demographic and that makes a lot of difference from a financial sort of sense for somebody like us who is investing,” he said.
Jayaraj also touched upon the consumption of other sports and expressed hope that the upcoming Paris Olympics will change the narrative. Of the top 100 broadcast or streamed programmes in the country, 92 happened to be cricket, he noted.
“Hopefully, if we start seeing a lot more Indian athletes win, things will certainly change. That is why we are extremely hopeful of the Olympics. We believe that this is possibly going to be our best-ever performance as a country and I am sure that will be quite a breakthrough,” he added.
Jayaraj pointed out that Indian sports viewing habits are almost entirely live as just 1 pc happens to be around, highlights, non-live content, and documentaries.
However, he was bullish about the growing market of sports documentaries and docu-series in India and predicted that it will become quite big over the next four or five years.
