The Indian Premier League is the hottest property as far as sports broadcasting is concerned in India and it is believed that the conglomerate reliance is vying to take a dip in that arena through its digital and broadcasting hands of Jio TV and TV 18. If reports are to be believed then Jio will be bidding for the digital and TV rights of the IPL from 2022 onwards.
To make this dream into reality, the network is poaching experienced hands from existing sports broadcasting networks as Disney+ Hotstar SVP & Head of Advertising, Gulshan Verma has joined JioAds as CEO. “Another senior ad sales executive from a broadcasting company who recently stepped down might also be in talk with them,” Exchange4Media quoted a source as saying.
The Reliance network has occasionally been testing the waters of sports broadcast previously through its venture of TV18 which in partnership with Viacom owns and operates 57 channels in India.
Recently it acquired LaLiga rights for India which would be aired on Voot and MTV. In 2018, it had acquired Nidahas Trophy and had aired it on the Hindi movie channel Colors Cineplex while it also airs the Road Safety series regularly.
IPL 2020, which was live-streamed through Disney + Hotstar had a platform reach of 260 million while another 350 million watched it on the Star Sports network. Hence, the acquisition of this right is being eyed by Reliance to further increase its penetration through the Jio network.
“If Jio manages to win IPL media rights, the scale of the tournament will reach an unprecedented level. It will be a never-seen-before scale,” the source said, on the condition of anonymity.
Star India had paid a whopping Rs 16347.5 crore to bag the IPL media rights for five years till 2022.