Hotstar sets a new record in the 11th season of the IPL

When news set out that Star Sports had won the rights for a massive price of Rs 16,347.5 crore, critics started issuing a warning that Star might not recover what they had invested in the tournament. Further, there were various reports that suggested how difficult it would be for Star to regain the money that it had invested.

One thing that the viewers were well aware of was that Hotstar would be gaining momentum under Star Sports, and there would be a gradual increase in the number of viewers and in terms of revenue for Hotstar.

The first time that the streaming service went into the record books was during the 2016 ICC Champions Trophy final between India and Pakistan. Hotstar clocked in 4.8 million simultaneous viewers which at that point was the highest viewership ratings in Asia-Pacific. In the 10th edition, over 130 million users had tuned in on Hotstar, which had remained as the official streaming service for the last five years.

All records shattered by Hotstar

However, this year Hotstar has broken all the possible records with 202 million viewers have logged on to the streaming platform to watch the 11th season of the Indian Premier League, which is a 55.3% jump from last year.

Ajit Mohan, Chief executive of Hotstar said to LiveMint, “I believe that IPL XI has proved to be an inflexion point for mobile as a platform becoming mainstream. The viewership numbers on Hotstar are a testimony that digital can be scaled like a mass media platform television.”

The final between the Chennai Super Kings and the Sunrisers Hyderabad alone clocked in a record of 10.3 million viewers on Hotstar. The opening week of the tournament, the streaming platform got in 5.5 million viewers for the clash between the Super Kings and the Kolkata Knight Riders.

The highest was for the finals between CSK and SRH

On the 22nd May, it broke the previous record with 8.26 million watching the game between the Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Super Kings.

“I believe social TV and gaming, which keep the viewer engaged, is the way forward for sports content online,” concluded Mohan while he talked about how Hotstar implemented WatchN’Play and VR experience to hike up the user experience.

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