Buddy, firstly Star India (under Fox ownership) bought the IPL rights at a very high price. They did bring in many new innovations on both TV as well as Hotstar platform for streaming of IPL and invested a lot in improving the viewing / immersive experience . Now when they have invested so much on a sporting property they have to at the same time think about ways to recover all the money and earn profit. Even right now Disney-Star has bought TV rights of IPL for a very high and so has Jio/Viacom18 for acquiring digital rights of IPL but both will have somewhat different strategy to make a success out of it
So let me clearly state that TV as well as OTT/Digital medium posses no threat to each other....both have tremendous potential to grow without in any major way adversely impacting each other. This holds particularly true for events/content viewed by extremely large section of population. IPL as an event enjoys viewership from mass as well as affluent / niche audience so it is bound to get great ratings be it on TV or OTT platform.
Jio/Viacom18 has paid an extremely high amount not only for digital rights of all matches but also acquired the rights of additional non exclusive bouquet of IPL matches thus in a way paying double the amount for certain matches so they will try their best to invest as much as they can to provide best experience to viewers and attract maximum subscribers to Jio Cinema platform to watch IPL across devices. They r even offering Jio Cable which can b attached to Old CRT TV sets and Jio Cinema IPL feed can be streamed on TV thereby trying to even expand the viewership base into financially weaker section of the audience / DD Free Dish viewers who would not have the money to spend on internet/Broadband and watch IPL on Jio Cinema. All in all right now main aim of Jio/Viacom18 is to spend enormously rather than thinking about profit or loss. If they get large number of viewers onboard then more ad revenues will flow in which will help recover some of the investment however as there is no subscription fee being charged hence in my opinion/analysis it won't be possible for them to recover most of the expenditure being done. We all know later on in next 2 or 3 years as they r successful on building a robust viewer base on their OTT platform , they will gradually start having subscription charges and introduce other such revenue streams to be able to achieve a financially viable business model. Bringing viewers onto Jio Cinema platform will help them also increase content viewership across other genres of content which is available on the platform hence has multifold advantages.
It is important to have such a strategy hence they r doing so, when Star India had the digital rights they too introduced many offers or schemes to get onboard maximum viewers but there was no real need for them to do so as Hotstar was still at that time made a mark as very popular OTT platform + in beginning years as Internet/Broadband was still not as affordable or prevalent hence there was limited scope for growth. Later since 2018 or 19 more and more opportunities opened up and alongwith streaming of content on mobile there came a period when personalised viewed picked up which meant some part of the population started watching IPL on their mobile devices rather than TV and with Smart TV / Boxes coming into play this shift even became more rapid thus u had Disney-Star starting to tie up with Mobile/DTH/Cable Operators and providing Disney+Hotstar OTT subscription in combos or even on complimentary thus trying to reach out to maximum people and leverage the potential to expand the digital viewership which again they were sucesfull to achieve. Since Disney-Star had both TV and Digital Rights hence growth on both fronts or even a shift from one to another was beneficial to them. Only thing which Disney-Star should have done but did not do was to launch Star Sports First channel exclusively on DD Free Dish platform and air key/some matches of IPL on it thus reaching out to more audience and attracting them towards upgrading to Pay TV platforms for watching the event. This philosophy that if content is made available on DD Free Dish platform then there is a risk of losing Pay TV subscriber base is wrong, a properly thought about content / pricing strategy can make sure that both type of audience base continue to grow and even bring in good revenue for broadcaster. They should have atleast launched some device/accessory like Jio Cable for people not having financial resources to opt for broadband/internet or Pay TV which would have immensely helped in expanding their viewer base but again did not do so. Now i believe with Jio/Viacom18 trying to reach out to DD Free Dish viewers, Disney-Star will think about providing IPL matches on DD Free Dish platform either through Star Utsav/ Star Utsav Movies or by launching Star Sports First as an exclusive channel on this platform while removing it from Pay TV Platforms .
Star Sports channels might as well be provided Free Of Cost to DTH /Cable TV viewers during IPL which may again help scale up ratings which would then help in raising ad slot rates thus they would not be losing out much on the revenue front. There is no need for 4K telecast on TV as it is primarily targeted towards niche/premium viewers which would watch IPL on Jio Cinema, even Jio Cinema is offering 4K feed only for English Commentary thus clearly thru this feed catering to niche subscriber base . Star Sports most probably will provide multi camera angle support feature in IPL by launching some interactive service button/service on DTH/Cable TV platforms ad this service may also support real time data/analytics or some sort of interesting features for viewers to have a more immersive experience. Already Star Sports has brought in Dolby Atmos on Star Sports 1 HD, Star Sports 1 HD Hindi and maybe same will be provided on their regional sports HD channels too. Many such other initiatives will be rolled out to make the whole experience for TV viewers extremely grand & big
It may be the longest you have ever written.