Disney Star hails half a billion IPL cricket viewers, promises free Asia Cup and World Cup

Disney Star, Disney’s Indian unit, has hailed what it describes as record-breaking audiences for its coverage of Indian Premier League cricket and has announced that it will make the Asia Cup and ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup tournaments free to view on mobile devices later this year.

The streamer’s chief executive Sajith Sivanandan said that the move would make the two cricket events available to a wider audience and would help grow the overall ecosystem.

Disney Star said its coverage of the IPL had delivered 505 million viewers on its network, making it the first cricket tournament to register over half a billion viewers.

Citing figures from audience measurement outfit BARC, Disney Star said that it had accumulated 427.1 billion minutes of watch time for the live broadcast of the matches.

The finals between GT and CSK registered a peak concurrency of 64.1 million, the highest for IPL 2023. Additionally, 47 out of 74 matches registered peak concurrency of more than 30 million. The Hindi Speaking Markets broke records with 334 million fans watching the tournament, a growth of 47% compared to the last edition.

Some 101 million viewers tuned into Dinsey Star’s HD feed of the games.

Disney Star said its pre-tournament build-up programming attracted a record-breaking 205.6 million viewers.

“We are thankful for the overwhelming support of our fans, who joined us in our journey to make Tata IPL 2023 the most-watched Cricketing event in India’s broadcast history. From last ball nail-biters to high-scoring thrillers, from the addition of the impact player rule to the emergence of future stars, from the last spot on the playoffs being decided in the last league stage match to the tournament winner being decided on the final ball, this edition of IPL has been special in many ways. Countless memories will be etched in cricket history including the fact that is the first time that half a billion viewers tuned in for a Cricket tournament,” said head of sports Sanjog Gupta.

“We would also like to express our sincere appreciation for the BCCI, the players, and the franchisees for putting on such a spectacle. We believe our #BetterTogether campaign and world-class coverage of the event bolstered the efforts of the entire ecosystem. As we celebrate this historic IPL season, we are energized to continue pushing the boundaries and delivering exceptional cricket experiences across linear and digital screens to fans across the country.”