When it comes to 1 million plus cities, IPL on Hotstar will be much larger than IPL on Sony: Ajit Mohan at VDONXT 2017

Prasana Krishnan, Vinit Karnik, Ajit Mohan and Alex Hayward were panelists in a session moderated by Vanita Kohli Khandekar at vdonxt asia 2017.

Indian Premier League emerged as the topic of tussle between Hotstar and Sony Pictures Networks India. The domestic T20 tournament is one of the very few sporting events that has two separate owners for digital and television broadcast. Hotstar streams the tourney live while SPNI broadcasts it through multiple TV channels. The 10th edition of the tournament is scheduled to begin early April 2017 and the tussle seems to have already started.

"IPL 2016 had 10 times more viewers on Hotstar than on Sony's HD offering," said Ajit Mohan representing Hotstar in his opening remarks. He was a panelist alongside, Prasana Krishnan, executive vice-president and business head, Sony SIX and Sony ESPN, Vinit Karnik, business head, ESP Properties and Alex Hayward, senior business development manager, Adobe Primetime Video Solutions. Contributing editor, Business Standard, Vanita Kohli Khandekar was moderating the session on day 2 of vdonxt asia held in Mumbai. The topic of discussion was, "What does the growth of digital mean for traditional sports broadcasters?"

The ballroom was filled with executives from the media and entertainment industry, and Mohan's initial comment raised many eyebrows. Krishnan ignored Mohan's statistics with a smile and went on to put forward his initial remarks. Krishnan believes digital is playing the role of a catalyst when it comes to expanding the reach and time spent on sports content. At this stage he sees no eating each other's pie happening and feels television's pie is safe.

Vinit Karnik's point was that live and repeat of live, which till now is the strategy on traditional sports broadcasting, needs to have an alternative. "Indian digital players need to experiment with surround programming and wrap around shows as done by ManU TV or Chelsea TV does, he added.

Krishnan too, shares similar thoughts and sees this as an opportunity, "There is an opportunity to do that with IPL as all the franchises are based in India and very soon I see this happening too."

Alex Hayward, who Khandekar had asked to bring in some global perspective, too, considered sports a vital driver of consumption growth. "All the big consumption that happens online majorly belongs to sports events and I think sports will continue to be a prime force behind driving digital consumption," he added.

Ajit Mohan again dived in to the conversation and this time with stats against Star's traditional sports broadcast. "In one million plus cities Hotstar's viewership of any recent live sports event has been 70 per cent of Star Sports viewership," he stated.

"We are in a very comfortable position now when it comes to cricket, and in 2017 across one million plus cities, IPL on Hotstar will be much larger than IPL on Sony," were Mohan's closing remarks.

Event partners include: Adobe (Presented By), Viu (Powered By), Akamai (Technology Partner), Voot (Digital Partner), EY (Knowledge Partner), Unruly (Video Partner), Dropbox Business (Collaboration Partner), Web Talkies (Entertainment Partner), 101India.com (New Age Digital Partner), Culture Machine (Content Partner), 24 Frames Digital (Streaming Partner), Blogadda.com (Blogging Partner), NDTV Prime (TV Partner), Content Asia (International Media Partner), and Advertising Agencies Association of India and The Advertising Club (Community Partners).