JioCinema's IPL 2023 Opening Weekend Clocks 147 Crore Views, Surpasses Entire IPL 2022 Digital Viewership

Zee News

JioCinema, the official streaming partner of IPL 2023 and owned by Viacom18, has had a record-breaking opening weekend. The platform claimed to have achieved 147 crore video views across the first three days, exceeding the entire digital viewership of IPL 2022 on Disney+ Hotstar. JioCinema also surpassed the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 in terms of viewership. During the season's opening match between Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans, the platform had a peak concurrency of 1.6 crore viewers. Additionally, JioCinema recorded more than 2.5 crore app downloads in a single day, with new viewership for the opening weekend standing at 10 crore and new app downloads surpassing 5 crore.

A _____ clash awaits at Chepauk! __ #TATAIPL #CSKvLSG #IPLonJioCinema pic.twitter.com/BbBuS0QaD0

— JioCinema (@JioCinema) April 3, 2023

According to the company, JioCinema's unique features like 4K feed, 12-language coverage, 16 unique feeds, hype mode, and multicam setup continued to attract fans. Despite initial glitches on the app reported by some users, the average time spent per viewer per match reached 57 minutes, marking a 60% increase compared to last season's first weekend on Hotstar.

Anil Jayaraj, CEO of Viacom18 Sports, said that these numbers were exceptional and evidence of the digital revolution sweeping through the country. He noted that digital is targetable, addressable, and interactive, with measurement based on the exact number of people who watch, unlike legacy services, which rely on subjective extrapolation from a small sample set.

For IPL 2023, JioCinema made free match streams available in regional languages like Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Odiya, and Gujarati for the first time, in addition to the usual English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada streams. Jayaraj said that the opening weekend of IPL 2023 was a testimony to the faith viewers had shown in JioCinema's offerings to make the league more accessible, affordable, and in unique first-time cricket broadcast languages.

JioCinema is estimated to garner more than 60% of ad sales this IPL season, with the remaining going to TV. More than 20 brands across consumer segments have partnered with JioCinema, including Dream11, JioMart, PhonePe, Amazon, Rapido, RuPay, Tiago EV, Appy Fizz, ET Money, Castrol, TVS, Oreo, Bingo, Sting, AJIO, Haier, Louis Philippe Jeans, Ultra Tech Cement, Puma, Kamla Pasand, Kingfisher Power Soda, and Jindal Panther TMT Rebar.