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Remember the first time IPL streamed live online? It wasn't on Disney+ Hotstar or JioCinema
Clue: DLF was the title sponsor and there was just one reliable streaming platform in India.
For many Indians, Cricket is like a religion, and every tournament is like a big festival. One of these festivals is the Indian Premier League (IPL), which started in 2008. Sony Pictures Network had the rights to broadcast IPL matches for 10 years (2008-2017). But does anyone remember when and where the IPL was first shown live online?
It was in 2010. The IPL became the first sports event ever to be shown live on YouTube. Nikhil Rungta, who currently works as an independent director and board member for various companies, held the position of chief marketing officer at Google back in 2010. He spearheaded the initiative to broadcast the tournament live on YouTube, expanding its reach to over 200 countries.
He took to LinkedIn and reminisced the behind-the-scene story of the same. Rungta explains that after teaming up with the IPL management to stream the matches, the main challenge was not just making sure the technology worked well, but also letting people know about this new idea and getting them to watch the IPL channel on YouTube.
“My marketing team at Google put together massive marketing plan - from front page ads in top dailies to wrapping Mumbai locals to branding luxury buses to acquiring rights to all the prime billboards in India, you name it, we had it all covered,” he shares.
Rungta described the marketing strategies and everything involved as a “mammoth effort”. Nothing this big had ever been streamed live before. Once the event started and the matches were live online, the results were amazing and better than anyone expected.
“We blew away every metric by miles. At the end of 60 days of IPL, we had these amazing statistics,” he says.
The results were as follows:
#1 sports channel worldwide
#1 channel in India: surpassed views of NBA, NHL, ESPN and UFC globally
#1 most viewed, and
#1 most subscribed in India
This was seen as the largest YouTube marketing campaign ever because it got over 55 million visits and 29 million views on the IPL's YouTube channel. During the IPL finals, there were 4,50,000 (450K) people watching at the same time. It might seem small compared to today, where digital platforms can get around 30-40 million views at once.
Rungta felt proud of what he, his team, and colleagues accomplished, considering the challenges like the lack of smartphones, fast internet, and fewer than 100 million internet users back then.
The IPL 2024 commenced on March 22, 2024 with the match between Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Viewers have the option to catch the live action of the tournament on JioCinema or Star Sports TV channels. During the first innings of the match, JioCinema had about 21 million viewership.