IPL TV viewership draws 451 million unique audience as of week 5, 21% higher than last full season

Total viewership as of 48 matches after week five in the ongoing edition is also 33% higher than previous season in the same period. Disney Star is the official television broadcaster of IPL 2023.

A total of 266 billion minutes have been consumed in the first 48 matches of the sixteenth edition of the cricketing tournament, which is the second highest ever, excluding Covid years, data showed.

While IPL ratings grew on TV between 2018 to 2020, the ratings have seen a continuous decline, dropping to as low as 3.68 TVR last season.

Entertainment giant The Walt Disney Company’s flagship streaming service Disney+ lost four million subscribers in its second quarter that ended April 1, as the company approached its third round of layoffs.

In its Q2 2023, the company reported 157.8 million subscribers, compared to 161.8 million in the previous quarter.

The key reason behind the decline was Disney+Hotstar, which lost 8 per cent of its subscriber base — from 57.5 million in Q1 2023 to 52.9 million in Q2.”Disney+Hotstar average monthly revenue per paid subscriber decreased from $0.74 to $0.59 due to lower per-subscriber advertising revenue,” the company said in a statement.

The drop in the Indian subscribers is mainly because the platform did not retain streaming rights for the Indian Premier Cricket (IPL) League.

The BCCI has given the TV and digital broadcasting rights of this Tata IPL season 2023 to different companies. Digital is seeing its direct benefit. Jio-Cinema is streaming IPL matches for free. This has further helped in bolstering IPL’s viewership on the digital platform.