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Simultaneously, the company aims to boost its paid streaming subscribers to 100 million through direct sign-ups and telecom-bundled deals, they added. It is also eyeing a bump-up in the industry pay-TV base due to the switch to hybrid streaming model for cricket and aggressive seeding of Star Sports in the TV universe.
As the first IPL following the high-profile merger of Star India and Viacom18, it has signed major sponsors across TV and digital, including My11Circle, Birla Opus, SBI, PhonePe, Mutual Funds Sahi Hai, Britannia 50-50, Haier, Voltas, MRF, Amazon Prime, Thums Up, Google Search, Jaquar Bath + Light, Lays, Allen Solly, GPay, Kent Kuhl Fans, Dream11, Campa, TVS, Asian Paints, Maruti, CaratLane and Amul. Last year, the cumulative ad revenue on TV and digital was roughly ₹4,000 crore.
Overall, the network has onboarded 1,100 advertisers, including large brands and small and medium enterprises. This year, JioStar has aggressively targeted SMEs, many of which typically advertise on Google and Meta. IPL ad packages for TV range from ₹40 crore to ₹240 crore. For regional partners, the packages are as low as ₹16 crore. For connected TV (CTV), it is ₹8.5 lakh per 10 seconds and ₹250 cost per impression on mobile.
JioStar is looking to add 40 million paid subscribers for JioHotstar during the IPL through both direct sign-ups and telecom partnerships to take its base to 100 million. Formed after the merger of Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema, the streaming platform currently has 62 million subscribers, up from 50 million at launch of the merged platform on February 14.
“IPL 2025 will be the biggest edition not just in terms of advertising but also subscriptions,” said JioStar chief executive, sports, Sanjog Gupta, without sharing any specific details. He added that big-screen advertising inventory is nearing a sell-out across both linear TV and connected TV.
JioStar has set an ambitious target of engaging one billion viewers for IPL 2025 across TV and digital. Gupta dismissed concerns over declining pay-TV subscriptions and the absence of fully free sports content on digital platforms, citing the record-breaking viewership of the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 across both mediums.
“The reason why sports viewership is rising despite challenges in the pay-TV sector is the significant growth in sports channel penetration since April 2014, when we embarked on this journey to expand sports viewership,” he said. The pay TV industry is expected to add between 1.5 million and 2 million net paid TV subscribers during the IPL, he said.
As per Broadcast Audience Research Council data, the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 outperformed the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 by 23% on TV. JioHotstar set a new record in India’s live sports streaming with the tournament, drawing more than 5.4 billion views and nearly 110 billion minutes of watch time.
“JioHotstar recorded a peak concurrency of 61.2 million for the ICC Champions Trophy final despite the shift to a hybrid model,” he said, downplaying fears of a potential drop in reach on mobile.
