The cricket festival of India, Indian Premier League's latest edition is approaching fast. The teams have already started their camps and some big names are sweating out in the nets to take the season by storm on the pitch when it arrives. Fans are excited and they are anticipating some blockbuster cricketing action in the upcoming season with the home-away format returning after three years. For the first time the media rights of the IPL are sold to two different networks, the telecast rights to Disney Star and the streaming rights to Viacom18. Ahead of the season, Disney Star announces that they will telecast 12 of the matches on its free-to-air channel Star Utsav Movies. JioCinema to Provide IPL 2023 Free Live Streaming Online in 4k.

According to e4m, Disney Star, for the first time since bagging the rights in 2018, will telecast the matches on Free Dish. Disney Star confirmed the news, saying, “This year, for the first time, Star Sports will take 12 IPL games on FTA via its Star Utsav Movies channel.” Explaining the idea behind the decision, a senior executive of the network said, “In taking select IPL games to FTA, we aim to give an unserved audience cohort the opportunity to sample the top-quality content proposition that Star Sports presently makes available only to its Pay TV subscribers. As income and aspiration levels grow among these FTA viewers, Disney Star expects that many of them, based on their viewing experience of this content, will transition to Pay TV, helping this universe grow further from its current base of 168 million connections (BARC Data).” IPL 2023 Live Streaming: Viacom18 To Merge JioCinema and Voot for Indian Premier League Online Viewing Option.

This is the first time IPL will be telecasted on Free Dish. It can boom Disney Star's viewership in the rural market. Industry sources also indicated that this could also be Disney Star’s strategy to counter Viacom 18 Sports’ move to stream the tournament for free on Jio and to attract advertisers.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 05, 2023 11:55 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).