Indiatimes' Online Streaming Of IPL 4 Gets 72M Page Views On Youtube

Times Internet Ltd (Indiatimes) has announced that the online streaming of season four of the IPL T20 cricket tournament on its Youtube channel registered 72 million page views globally.

Times Internet partnered with Google in April to broadcast 74 live IPL matches on Youtube.com after the Times consortium won the global tender for media rights for a period of four years starting with 2011 edition of IPL that concluded last month. The country's top body governing cricket, the BCCI, had last year scrapped its earlier deal with World Sports Group over alleged improper payment of a facilitation fee. World Sports Group had inturn transferred the rights to Elephant Capital-backed Global Cricket Ventures.

There has been a 31 per cent jump in online viewership of IPL, from 55 million registered last year. The number of page views from India rose 79 per cent from 24 million in the last season to 43 million this year. The finals witnessed over five million page views, the company said.

"Our approach to IPL was focused on providing a high quality viewing experience and maximizing audience reach through TIL's network strength and distribution partnerships. Our efforts around product innovation and quality continuously paid off with increased audience loyalty, strong value to advertisers and brand associations with the tournament," said Rishi Khiani, CEO, Times Internet.

Times Internet monetised the live streaming and match highlights with ad formats such as clickable video ads, dynamic banners, flash innovations and page skinning. Advertiser Maruti Suzuki's chief general marketing manager Shashank Srivastava said, "After the World Cup we realized that there would be a fatigue element in TV viewership. And we also realised that the digital medium would catch the right target group for IPL."

Recently, the company entered into a digital partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA) of the USA to launch a section exclusively for NBA on the Times of India website.