Quick Note On IPL Live Streaming Revenues

Going by YouTube’s own numbers (as of 9:30 AM, May 12, 2011), the channel seems to have recieved about 5.7 million views so far this month, which is also the month of the IPL. Going with a CPM of Rs. 200 for the pre-rolls, that would have generated about Rs. 11 lakh in revenue so far. The channel has four banner spots when the live match is on. Even if you go with the really unrealistic assumption of Rs. 200 CPM for each of those slots the total revenue would add up to less than Rs. 60 lakh so far. Even if we were to blindly double the numbers (2x everything), the revenue is not going be more than Rs. 2 crore. I’m being extremely cavalier with the numbers here and erring massively on the side of overestimation.

Now, why is this important? Simple reason is that the rights holders need to monetize at the rate of about Rs. 65 crore per year to even break even on what they paid for the rights. There is also streaming of the clips on Indiatimes itself, which should bring in additional revenue and other aspects like mobile should chip in chunks on their own, but I don’t see it all adding up to Rs. 65 crore this year. Granted, the numbers maybe way off from what is actually the case (the slots could also be spot than CPM, making the estimates entirely invalid) and the consortium that got the rights were rushed into selling it at the last moment and they could do a better job next year, but the bottom line is that monetizing this right is going to be tough. Really tough, in fact.

Never mind.