NEW DELHI: Star India, which holds the telecast right to the Indian Premier League, has set itself a singular focus of making India’s “greatest sporting spectacle” more engaging and bringing it even closer to cricket fans across the country. Towards this end, it is making significant investments in technology as well as on content across its network, besides presenting the IPL in six different languages targeting an unprecedented reach of 700 million fans across TV and digital.
Other than Hindi and English, the cash-rich league’s 11th season will be broadcast in four regional languages – Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali – Star India announced on Wednesday.
In its efforts to deepen engagement with viewers, Star is looking to present the IPL as a six-month long fiesta – starting with the retention event which was viewed by 8.1 million viewers.
For the upcoming auctions on 27 and 28 January, Star has created vivoiplelection.hotstar.com for its ‘Election se Selection’ campaign on the network.
On the technology front, the network will be introducing virtual reality (VR) mode, which will available on Hotstar, where 360 camera angles and commentary language selection option will be made available to viewers, offering further customisation through the “Super-fan feed”.
The network also announced an initiative for its commercial partners – Star Reimagine Creative Award – to be given to the two top advertisers that best utilise their respective sponsorship to engage IPL fans.
Detailing the packages being made available to advertisers, Star India managing director Sanjay Gupta said the interplay of TV and digital offers advertisers an unprecedented opportunity to build brands across platforms. Explaining further, he told SportzPower the Star Sports channels and Hotstar were being offered as a combined package for the large inventory advertisers. Smaller advertisers had the option of picking and choosing specific regional packages as also activations just on Hotstar.
As for international viewers, in an effort to drive subscriptions on Hotstar in the US and Canada, where the OTT platform was launched last September, the plan is to keep it off TV networks in those two territories. “Viewers in the US and Canada would have to subscribe to Hotstar to be able to watch matches live. As for other countries, we are still in the process of negotiations with both TV networks and international streaming platforms,” Gupta told Financial Express.
Said Gupta, “Over its 10-year journey, the IPL has grown into the single biggest property by far on Indian television. And now that it is on the Star India network across both, television and digital, we are set to use the confluence of technology, consumer insight, and experience in cricket coverage, to broaden the outreach and experience even further. The VIVO IPL 2018 will be a 6-month-long fiesta with new-age technology putting fans at the heart of the experience. We are confident that the VIVO IPL 2018, as re-imagined by Star India, will empower viewers, advertisers and the media & entertainment eco system of India with greater convenience and viewing pleasure, audience deliveries and all-round growth.”
Rahul Johri, CEO, BCCI commented: “Over the last decade, the BCCI has transformed the Indian Premier League from a radical new idea into India’s biggest sporting phenomenon and despite the scale of its success, the sky remains the limit for the VIVO IPL 2018.
“In Star India, we have a partner that not only believes in the immense potential of the IPL, but also believes in pushing the boundaries of sports broadcasting, which gives it the power and ability to take the IPL to even greater heights. With even richer content across a six-month entertainment calendar, we are happy it will delight a much larger number of cricket lovers across the length and breadth of India.”
