IPL On Jio Cinema: A Watershed Moment In The History Of Cricket Broadcasting

Let 31 March, 2023, be remembered as the day when billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who had bought the streaming rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) for over Rs 23,000 crore, decided to stream it for free on Jio Cinema.

Ambani was not being philanthropic, but choosing traffic driven advertising revenue over paid subscriptions. The larger goal was to disrupt the traditional broadcaster, Star Sports, that secured the television rights of the IPL, with an enhanced viewing experience. 

The battlelines were drawn before the two companies, Disney (running Star Network) and Reliance (running Jio Cinema) before the first ball was even bowled. A couple of hours before the scheduled start, cricketing starpower was visible on both platforms.

While Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Eoin Morgan, Graeme Smith, and Brett Lee amongst others made for the English commentary team, their counterparts on the Star Network included Paul Collingwood, the great Jacques Kallis, Kevin Pietersen, and Sunil Gavaskar, along with several other former cricketers. 

Jio, however, has upped the ante with several camera angles, including the ‘bird’s eye camera view’, which is as good as experiencing the game in a stadium.

The camera angles can be selected through the application with ease, and while there were some glitches on day-1, they are expected to smoothen out as the tournament progresses.

The icing on the cake was the multilingual commentary. While we have been accustomed to Hindi and English commentary, Jio Cinema had commentators in twelve languages! 

When it comes to commentators in regional languages, Jio has left no stone unturned when it comes to star power.

Notable names include Zaheer Khan, Anil Kumble, and Suresh Raina in the Hindi team; Kedar Jadhav and Dhawal Kulkarni for Marathi; Jhulan Goswami for Bengali; Venkatesh Prasad for Kannada; Sarandeep Singh and Reetinder Singh Sodhi amongst others for Punjabi; and to everyone’s surprise, Ravi Kishan, who is a member of the Lok Sabha, was roped in to be a part of the Bhojpuri commentary team. 

Going forward, IPL on Jio Cinema could well be about 8-12 camera angles and 12-16 languages to choose from, while streaming. Complement this with the AR/VR hardware and you have a viewing experience TV broadcast cannot match in decades.

Perhaps, that is what Ambani is betting on; for people to splurge on data and hardware costs in the long run while he keeps one of the biggest sporting franchises free for all.

In the larger scheme of things, it is a smart move, one that may push down television viewership, prompting many to cut the cord for good. 

On the downside, there were glitches in the application on Jio Cinema, but for a generation that grew up using the radio for cricket updates, had to settle with Doordarshan or a local cable channel for the feed which was often delayed by an over or five minutes, the problems were pardonable.

For this season, the broadcasters, Disney and Reliance, would battle off the field, but in the long term, as internet speeds get better and 4K viewing on smartphones becomes common, it would be hard for the television channels to keep up with the change. 

One of the complaints against the IPL, in the last few years, was that it was becoming monotonous and one could not tell the difference between seasons.

Jio Cinema, along with the new rules in the game (impact player, DRS review for wides, no balls, etc) may have fixed this problem to some extent. Even if one is not a cricket player, it is always fun to tune into regional commentary for the energy and entertainment on the cards.

IPL, in its sixteenth year now, is headed for a transformation on all fronts.