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The telcos will lead the marketing spending at Rs 240-280 crore across digital and television advertising, with the rest coming from handset makers, said media planners. Reliance Jio<\/a> and Bharti Airtel<\/a> are expected to lead the telco spending, with Vodafone Idea making some investments as well.
“All service providers will look at the IPL this year for communication around 5G. I would expect TV and digital to be at par in their (media buying) strategies since the reach of digital is expected to be massive,” said Rammohan Sundaram, country head-integrated media, DDB Mudra Group.
Both Bharti Airtel and Jio have launched their 5G services in the country since October 2022. Planners expect both of them to make a splash during the IPL since the platform offers sustained consumer engagement for an extended period.
“We expect Jio to spend aggressively this IPL since it’s the only time they activate an ATL (above the line) marketing campaign. And this time, the tournament is free for viewing on digital, which means prepaid users will need more top-ups, and Jio will want to take full advantage of the rise in demand for data,” another planner said on condition of anonymity.
The three telcos, Vivo, Xiaomi and Samsung did not respond to queries sent by ET on the matter till press time.
The IPL will be aired on JioCinema, the video streaming app originally under the telco Jio. Recently, it was merged into Viacom18 because of the tripartite deal between Reliance Industries, Paramount Global (earlier called Viacom), and Bodhi Tree Systems, a platform owned by James Murdoch's Lupa Systems and former Star India head Uday Shankar.
The tournament will be aired on digital for free for all consumers, a big shift from the paid model that incumbent Disney+Hotstar employed during its rights period. This increases the potential reach (total number of viewers) of the IPL on digital to 500 million, a highly lucrative number for any advertiser.
While it is an attractive advertising platform for telcos amid their 5G roll-out, it also presents an opportunity for them to capitalise on the data consumption demand digital streaming of the IPL brings.