MUMBAI: OTT platform Hotstar recorded 18.6 million concurrent viewers during the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019 final on Sunday, a new global record in live streaming.
The final match between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings that took place on Sunday saw the streaming platform soar past its earlier record of 12.7 million concurrent users, achieved during an earlier game between Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Mumbai Indians, according to a statement.
With the 12th edition of the VIVO IPL, Hotstar aimed to reach 300 million unique visitors, and by the end of the tournament, Hotstar had not only recorded in excess of 300 million users but also witnessed a 74% increase in watch-time as compared to last year. For some context, the streaming platform registered 150 million unique visitors last year.
Varun Narang, chief product officer, Hotstar, said: “We have an innate belief in delivering a game-changing viewing experience to our consumers through ideas that challenge the status quo.
“The achievements of this season once again bear witness to Hotstar being the most preferred sports destination for the country.
“With technology as our backbone and our all-round expertise in driving scale, we are confident we will continue to break global records and set new benchmarks with each passing year.”
The IPL began on March 23. The seven-week tournament was stream streamed live in eight languages on the platform, which is now gearing up for the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup.
For the IPL, Hotstar had rolled out a campaign #KoiYaarNahiFar, a social cricket-watching experience to bring people together irrespective of their location, enabling them to watch the matches together while simultaneously participating against each other in the ‘Watch N Play’ game.
During the IPL, Hotstar had also introduced the social element while viewing matches—called #KoiYaarNahiFar. As many as 64.4 million users engaged with this feature, there were 43.5 million comments and 5.9 billion emojis were sent by users to their friends and family.
Ahead of IPL 2019, Hotstar had implemented a new streaming technology that required ten times lesser computing power for streaming, and could handle 2.5 times more streaming traffic simultaneously. This meant users got better streaming quality, resolution and consistency while watching the Live matches on the Hotstar app on their smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, including Android TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick. Since the bit-rates required to stream the same quality of content were now lower than before, the streaming experience meant lesser 4G/3G/Wi-Fi data was consumed comparatively.
In 2017, Star India secured the broadcast and streaming rights for the IPL cricket tournament for a five year period, estimated for around $2.5 billion. At the time, Star India was owned by 21st Century Fox, but earlier this year, Walt Disney acquired Star India as a part of the 21st Century Fox businesses for about $71.3 billion.
Hotstar has three subscription tiers in India. The first is the free tier, which offers limited content. The second is the Hotstar VIP, priced at Rs 365 per year, and bundles premium Indian shows and sports streaming including cricket, football and Formula 1. The top-tier Hotstar Premium is priced at Rs 199 per month or Rs 999 per year and includes all Premium content, including international content from shows from HBO original programming, Showtime, ABC Studios and streaming service Hooq. Once Disney+ content goes Live, that will also be available in India on Hotstar Premium.
The upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 will also be streamed on Hotstar.
