Disney Star puts IPL on FTA channel to attract mass brands.

Disney Star will this year transmit 12 of the games on its free-to-air channel Star Utsav Cinema for the first time since purchasing the TV rights to the Indian Premier League five years ago, in yet another effort to reach mainstream brands.

On March 4, e4m exclusively flashed the news.

The choice to carry the IPL on Free Dish for the first time is anticipated to significantly increase Disney Star's audience in the rural market.

According to sources at Star, the move intends to give a previously untapped audience cohort the chance to experience the high-quality material Star Sports now makes available solely to its Pay TV members. "Disney Star hopes that many of the FTA viewers, based on their viewing experience of this material, will transfer to Pay TV, enabling this universe develop further from its existing base of 168 million connections (BARC Statistics)," a representative stated.

Industry insiders point out that this could possibly be Disney Star's plan to thwart Viacom18 Sports' decision to stream the competition for free on Jio. According to experts, this is also a tactic to boost viewership and draw in brands that appeal to large audiences.

"This will aid them in luring FMCG companies that serve consumers in tier two and tier three areas. The change won't have any impact on high-end or even mid-segment businesses, though, because FTA channel subscribers might not be large spenders, according to a media planner.

Media rights have been sold to two distinct networks for the first time in IPL history, and both parties are doing all in their power to draw advertisers and increase income.

Disney Star is seeking both corporate and small and medium business (SMB) advertisers this year in an effort to increase ad income and broaden the advertiser base. They also announced selling their regional stream separately to small local marketers at the beginning of last month. They had never done this previously, according to a different planner.

Sports18 earlier in January declared that it would offer free IPL streaming in 11 regional languages. The Jio app will offer the matches for free, and it will do so in 11 other languages, including Bengali, Tamil, and Bhojpuri.

In response, Karan Taurani of Elara Capital asserted that the move was primarily motivated by viewership growth pressure that Star may have anticipated as a result of the IPL's availability for free on Jio Cinema as well as due to a general fall in the Pay TV household base. This is a wise move by Star because it may prevent the decline in the number of Pay TV homes (an annual loss of 3%, or 5 million households), which would be more than offset by the addition of 35–40 million FTA households. This will provide Star vs Jio Cinema a competitive advantage and enable overall viewership to approach 500 million, bringing it on line with what Jio Cinema has been offering marketers, he continued.