With regional content, Star India puts it big at IPL

Star Sports, the official broadcaster of Vivo IPL 2018, has been laughing all the way to the bank. Star India’s regionalisation drive appears to have reaped rich rewards, with numerous IPL fans from the southern markets cheering for their favourite teams and players.

By targeting consumers across the country in a language that resonates with them, the television broadcaster has ensured that the regional markets, especially the South and West Bengal, “continue to grow across platforms at a scorching pace driven by localisation and the performance of the local teams, with a viewership increase of 38 per cent in impressions compared to last year for the comparable matches.”

When Star India won the broadcast rights of the Vivo IPL last year, one of the key observations was that the southern market was completely under-served, said an official privy to the discussions. This led the broadcaster to “invest massively in languages and to introduce dedicated Kannada, Tamil and Telugu feeds, along with a Bangla feed for fans in Bengal.”

Moreover, in the run-up to introduce these language feeds to fans and to identify the destination for them to catch the IPL action in their favourite language, Star India even on-boarded actor Shiva Rajkumar in Karnataka, and Prosenjit in West Bengal as official ambassadors of IPL in Kannada and Bangla, respectively and Jr NTR in Telugu for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Connecting with viewers

BusinessLine reached out to IPL’s regional commentators to get a whiff of the action. Kannada commentator Vijay Bhardwaj said: “The defining difference in regional commentary is that we are using the local dialect and are using the normal language instead of the classical one. With our casual and entertaining commentary, we are easily able to connect with viewers. All of this is borne out by the great response from viewers.”

Sourav Ganguly’s brother Snehashish Ganguly, who was roped in as a Bengali commentator, told BusinessLine that the response from smaller districts was phenomenal. Speaking about his maiden IPL effort, he said: “Live Bengali commentary has changed the way people enjoy the game.”

Corroborating this, Tamil commentator Subramaniam Badrinath, said: “The viewership graph is seemingly on the climb. Regional commentary, and the news and analysis presented, has the ability to reach out to a wider audience and helps people connect to the game on a much more personal level.”

The broadcaster also created a separate promo with MS Dhoni to introduce Star Sports 1 Tamil as the official IPL destination for fans in Tamil Nadu. The results were heady. Tamil Nadu/Puducherry witnessed a massive 75 per cent TV viewership growth in 43 IPL matches that were played, according to data from market research firm, BARC. While Andhra Pradesh/Telangana witnessed 21 per cent growth , the broadcaster saw 33 per cent growth in Karnataka, according to BARC data for 43 matches.

West Bengal registered 39 per cent growth, according to BARC data for 43 matches. As a newbie IPL broadcaster, Star India Network won the rights for a massive ₹163.5 billion from rival Sony Pictures Network in 2017.

Pulling out all the stops for the IPL grand finale to be aired on May 27, Star India has added two more language feeds, Marathi and Malayalam, taking the total to eight languages: English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Bangla, Marathi and Malayalam. Marathi channel Star Pravah is set to carry the Marathi language broadcast for the first time in the history of the IPL, while the Malayalam language feed will be broadcast on Asianet Movies. Actors Madhuri Dixit-Nene and Swwapnil Joshi are to join the Star Pravah team and engage with the regional audience.