IPL - "Indian Promo League" 2021 Begins
Is it worth spending so much by brands for being an advertising partner in a sporting league? Read it to find it...
The festival of T20 cricket is back after 6 months this time and fans can’t contain their excitement levels! With hoax hooting, a new wave of lockdowns, bio-secure bubbles similar to ones in IPL 2020 in UAE and only home viewers, the avatar of IPL 2021 is not much different as compared to IPL 14th edition. And another thing which hasn’t changed this year is the love of brands for this mega league. And why not?
The popularity of IPL is unparalleled. Despite Covid-19 defining the entire year 2020, IPL was the most searched topic in India. About 405 million (~50% of total TV viewers in India) people watched IPL 2020 on television while Hotstar’s reach was ~260 million people. And if trends are to be believed, this number would grow significantly in 2021.
Talking about Disney+ Hotstar, the platform added 21.2 million subscribers at the end of the December 2020 quarter (thanks to IPL that took place between September and November), with the number accounting for around 30 percent of its global subscriber base. Last year, the platform delivered 34 million impressions on an average during the tournament as more than 300 brands advertised on the platform. The network reportedly clocked INR 2,500 crore in revenue in 2020. This year, the revenues are expected to touch whopping INR 4000 crore.
Apart from established brands like Coca-Cola and Parle Agro; new age brands like Byju’s, Unacademy, Cred, Upstox stayed in the bandwagon of being associated with IPL. But this brings us to another important question –
Is it worth spending so much by brands for being an advertising partner in a sporting league?
Let us understand this with a little basic math:
According to BARC, IPL 2020 tournament was watched by 405 million viewers, a steep rise over the previous edition which had recorded 326 billion minutes of TV consumption. A 10 second spot on the star network costed 12 lakhs. This means that for every rupee spent by brands, 338 viewers watched the ad! Average per match impressions were 31.57 million, according to BARC. BARC defines impressions as number of individuals of a target audience averaged across minutes.
On the digital front, brands are charged on a CPM basis. CPM is the cost of 1000 impressions i.e. total number of times the ad is played on the screen (one personal account). The Hotstar IPL 2021 Advertising Rates are INR 180 CPM for mid-roll video ads (10-sec), INR 200 CPM for pre-roll video ads, and INR 75 for branded cards. As many as 260 million viewers had watched season 13 of IPL on video streaming platform. Therefore, for every rupee spent by a brand, 1400 viewers watched the ad on digital platforms! That’s phenomenal as compared to the conventional market returns.
So, next obvious question comes, Why only IPL?
One might argue that cricket is a popular sport in India, but why is it that only IPL garners all the advertising revenues, even in the presence of various bilateral international series that are held through the year. Well, in the defence of IPL, a series that generally doesn’t last more than three to five matches should not be compared with a tournament spanning almost two months. Secondly, with male and female cricket viewers increasing every year, IPL serves as a single platform for gender neutral brands to cater to different audiences via single platform.
A grand reach is also one the reasons that IPL is the hotbed for new product launches. Vivo had strategically launched new model Vivo V20 just a few weeks before IPL 2020 and V15 just before IPL 2019. Vivo V20 received record pre-bookings, which was more than 1 lakh within just six days of launch. For IPL 2021, Vivo announced X series as its official partner.
Tata Motors will be promoting its flagship SUV, Safari in IPL 2021. The tournament had earlier proven to be a game changer for Tata Nexon in 2019 and Tata Harrier in 2020.
For relatively new brands, like Cred, IPL platform provides a head start for gaining acceptance & creating brand recall in the markets. Cred is said to have added 2.4 million users during the two months of IPL Season 13 last year. No wonder it is going full hog with quirky advertisements this year as well to gain user traction.
Upstox is the first broking firm that has partnered with IPL since the cricket league was launched in 2008. The company currently has close to 3 million customers and aims to reach users deep within the country. Similarly, PhonePe aims to increase its user base of 280 million currently to 500 million by December 2022 & believes IPL 2021 to be a great part of the marketing efforts. Hence, IPL emerges as a perfect growth launchpad for new as well as established brands.
With all that said, it is important to understand here that IPL is not just a sporting tournament but also a huge advertising base. Considering factors like the long wait that fans went through, reduced sources of entertainment (especially sports) during revised lockdowns & restriction to homes will definitely cause a surge in the viewership of IPL, giving a better ROI to the brands investing in it.
No wonder, the spot rate by Star network for IPL ads has been raised to INR 13 lakhs for a 10 second spot from INR 12 lakhs the previous year! Interestingly, for IPL 2021, Star had sold more than 94% of its ad inventory by April 5 itself.
Do you still think IPL advertising is overpriced? Or rather underpriced?
Let us know before next Marketing Monday!!
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By: Anmol Gupta | Isha Garg