There were many records broken during the nail-biting World Cup semi-final match between India and New Zealand. Virat Kohli went past Sachin Tendulkar to bring up his 50th ton in One Day Internationals (ODI). Mohammed Shami became the highest Indian wicket-taker in ODI World Cup history with 7 wickets in yesterday’s match and a total of 54 wickets on his scoreboard. Along with this the peak concurrency during the match on Disney+ Hotstar surged to 5.3 crore, shattering the previous record of 4.4 crore during the India vs South Africa match earlier this month. It’s expected that the finals will be a massive playground for even brands to catch consumers’ attention. Broadcaster Disney Star is trying to fill up unsold TV ad inventory for the finals.
According to industry sources, the broadcaster has less than 5 percent of unsold TV ad inventory. However, the spike in ad rates may not attract brands. A 10-second spot is being sold for Rs 30 lakh. A senior media planner told Storyboard18, “Brands that are heavily investing during the world cup have already locked their media plans. Last minute takers will be few and if at all there are buyers they would ask for a better package deal, especially for television.”
Another chief executive of a media agency said that last minute buyers for marquee events usually go to digital, where the investments are not high and the be geo-targeted, leading to minimal waste of budgets. Television requires high frequencies and monies which are already invested by big planners during Diwali week and World Cup matches.
Earlier, Sarfaraz Ansari, Senior Vice President, Integrated Media, DDB MudraMax said that in the last World Cup, Star Network was able to generate Rs 2,500 to 2,800 crore. However, this year, they had expected to generate Rs 3,500 to 3,700 crore across both broadcast and digital.
Disney’s video streaming service, Disney+ Hotstar, reported a loss of 2.8 million paid subscribers for the fourth quarter, which concluded on September 30, 2023, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of subscriber decline for the platform, indicating ongoing challenges in retaining paid subscribers.
Despite the not so promising numbers, Disney boss Bob Iger is optimistic on the company’s prospects in India, saying Disney “would like to stay”. But that does not mean he is going to keep throwing good money after bad.
“We’re looking in an open minded way. We like being in business in India, we’d love to be able to strengthen our hand. I can’t at this point predict where that will end up,” Iger said in response to the sale of assets.
The latest quarterly results from Disney show a 24 percent decline in subscribers for Disney+ Hotstar in India, with memberships for the platform in India at 40.4 million compared to 52.9 million in the previous quarter. This amounts to a decline of 12.5 million users in a single quarter. Analysts had estimated that losing the digital rights to the IPL could cost Disney+Hotstar 15-25 million subscribers. The nearly 21 million subscribers lost over the last three quarters is within that range.