According to Broadcast Audience Research Council data for Male 15+ AB Urban, IPL 2025 achieved a record 7.5 Television Rating (TVR), scoring a 39% rise from last year. The T20 tournament’s reach grew by 14% to 253 million, while watch-time minutes surged by 22% to ₹2,770 crore.
The Chennai Super Kings vs Mumbai Indians clash became the most-watched IPL match ever on TV, with a 9.2 TVR and 163 million live viewers. TVR is a mix of reach and viewer time spent.
“This opening weekend of IPL was the biggest ever in its history. It is driven by a deep commitment to delivering immersive engagement and intuitive experiences, at an unprecedented scale. Sports fan experiences are fast heading towards a hyper-personalised future, the playbook for which is being written in India,” said Sanjog Gupta, CEO-sports, JioStar, at a US-India Business Council event on Tuesday.
The opening weekend attracted 1.37 billion views on JioHotstar. Across TV and digital, the total consumption stood at 50 billion minutes.
Experts attributed the strong viewership in this year’s edition of the IPL to JioHotstar’s shift from a fully-free model to a hybrid approach, JioStar’s extensive network, recent rise in pay-TV households, and growing penetration of sports channels.
Sports viewership has increasingly adopted a hybrid model due to the rapid rise in digital streaming, which continues to see steady growth, they added.
JioStar, which is broadcasting and streaming IPL matches across TV and digital platforms, aims to attract 1 billion viewers this year. This will mark a sharp increase from IPL 2024’s 541 million TV viewers.
LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM Media, highlighted that the hybrid model for live sports has significantly boosted TV viewership. “The viewership growth can also be attributed to the network power of JioStar, as IPL matches are airing across 26 channels spanning sports and entertainment,” he said.
Krishnan noted that transitioning to a paid streaming model has had a cascading effect on pay-TV net additions. In 2023 and 2024, JioCinema offered IPL streaming free of cost to all internet users.
Beyond record-breaking viewership, the tournament has also contributed to pay-TV growth by curbing subscriber churn and driving net additions. Industry sources report a net gain of 800,000 to 1 million pay-TV subscribers due to the IPL, reinforcing the role of major sporting events in expanding the pay-TV universe.
“With cricket going behind the paywall, the churn in the pay-TV industry has halted to a large extent. IPL is expected to boost the pay-TV base since it’s a two-month event,” said Manoj Dobhal, CEO, Dish TV India. “Broadcasters should put their premium content behind the paywall. While this move will help the industry, the broadcasters will be the biggest gainers.”
IPL 2025 is the first edition since the merger of Disney’s Star India and Reliance’s Viacom18 to form JioStar. The consolidation of IPL media rights under JioStar has strengthened monetisation opportunities.
JioStar is targeting ₹4,500 crore in ad revenues from both TV and digital, with over 30 sponsors and 1,100 advertisers on board.
