For JioCinema, the official streaming partner of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2023), another day means another record. The platform saw a peak concurrent viewership of 2.2 crore (22 million) during the final over of the Wednesday night match between Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, when CSK captain MS Dhoni smacked two sixes off RR bowler Sandeep Sharma.
“For one moment, 2.2 Cr Indians held their breath. Old memories rushed back. A familiar expectation took over. It didn’t quite end like it used to but for one moment, time stood still for 20 million+ people. One moment. One MS Dhoni,” JioCinema tweeted.
Soon after Dhoni’s efforts, ‘2.2 Cr’ started trending on Twitter, with over 18,100 tweets posted on the topic. “Till the last ball, the spectators kept watching the ups and downs of the match with bated breath. Mahendra Singh Dhoni once again showed the glimpse of the old days. Dhoni, considered to be the best finisher, made the match exciting by hitting two consecutive sixes in the last over,” Viacom18-owned JioCinema said in a statement.
Despite the 41-year-old’s valiant attempt, CSK fell short of RR’s total by 3 runs. CSK has now featured in 3 out of 5 games that have registered the highest concurrent viewership on JioCinema in IPL 2023. Earlier this week, the platform had recorded a concurrent viewership of 1.8 crore during the RCB v/s LSG game. That remains the second highest of the season so far.
JioCinema has had a roaring start to the 16th edition of IPL, clocking 147 crore video views in the opening weekend itself. This, the platform claims, is higher than the digital video viewership of the entire last season on Hotstar. “Time spent per video per match on JioCinema has also increased by 60 per cent,” the company shared.
For IPL 2023, JioCinema has made free match streams available in 12 languages, including first-time streams in Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Odia, and Gujarati. This is in addition to the usual English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada streams. “What we witnessed through the opening weekend of IPL 2023 is a testimony of the faith viewers have shown in JioCinema’s offerings to make the league more accessible, affordable, and in unique first-time cricket broadcast languages,” Anil Jayaraj, CEO of Viacom18 Sports, said in an earlier statement.