The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday awarded the global Internet and mobile rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) to Novi Digital Entertainment, a unit of Star India, for Rs 302.2 crore for a three-year period ending 2017.
This time around, Star will stream the matches live on its newly launched Video On Demand (VOD) platform hotstar.com. In the last season, the matches were streamed on Star India’s sports VOD venture starsports.com, which works on paid subscription. While IPL 7 recorded 64 million video views on starsports.com, the broadcaster is expecting a jump of 50 per cent or more in the numbers this year.
Starsports.com streams numerous live and exclusive sports event, which includes marquee football tourneys like Barclays Premier League, La Liga, FA Cup. The sports VOD platform will also stream ICC cricket world cup matches live.
According to reports the Pepsi IPL rights has been primarily acquired to boost user numbers for Hotstar, which was formally launched a week ago and its already got placements over WhatsApp and Facebook on the Google Play Store’s top free list.
The VOD platform promises to entertain viewers with its high dosage of drama, movies and sports and is touted to be next big thing for viewers on the go. But, with the IPL being streamed on Hotstar its still undecided if Starsports.com will also enjoy the broadcast rights with this new entrant.
In a first for India, Indya Interactive Services (which runs Hotstar.com) earlier premiered the Star Guild Awards 2015 on the video on demand service on 17 January. The award function was aired on Star Plus a day later on 18 January.