Leading up to the 18th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Siddharth Sharma and his team at JioStar were bouncing ideas off each other. That’s when one of them came up with the idea of ‘IPL becoming an adult,’ Sharma, the company’s content head (sports), says. “But that’s just for a match. You cannot use that narrative for an entire season.” So they worked around other ideas. “We used some, others we binned,” he says. Sharma takes this masthead around the challenges involved in producing the league and the genesis behind having an IPL stream only meant for kids. Excerpts:
Take us through the rigours of producing an IPL season?
I think the IPL in itself presents a unique challenge because of its scale, scope and how it impacts people. At a particular level, we don’t appreciate it enough. It does hold the nation in its throes. So when something of that nature, scale and impact needs to be crafted, the experience needs to be created. It’s important for us to plan well in advance. Planning for the next IPL begins when the previous cycle is still on. There are certain experiments you would have done which would have yielded some results that would have helped in the input for next season. The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. We serve 12 languages, and it includes pre, mid and post (games) shows.
What’s the content you have in mind for 2026?
Data is an important component in how we build for the next season. Understanding the consumer and their preferences is the North Star on which we base our coverage. It’s important for us to know what gets them, what gravitates a viewer towards IPL and what brings them back day after day, match after match.
It could be a language, it could be a team affinity, or it could be their heroes. It could be precision interventions that we make. It could be an entertainment aspect that gets introduced into the long season that we have. All of this forms the groundwork for the next season. There are a large number of people who watch IPL regularly. They are core fans, they watch close to 50 matches a season. Those are the loyalists, the disciples of the sport.
The other corner is the fan who watches only the big events. They will come for the opening match, they will come for the playoffs, and they will come for the CSK-MI game. Now, if I have to serve these audiences and give them a taste because they are more entertainment-heavy and cricket light, it’s important for us to imbue or infuse that sentiment into the coverage.
All of these learnings come into building (the coverage). We have a unique feed this year, which is speaking to kids, through the ‘Motu-Patlu’ characters. We have grown up hearing about and reading comic books about Motu-Patlu. So we have animated Motu-Patlu to do commentary. They are speaking to kids in the age group of 7-12. It is a new audience cohort. And it has done well because it is a digital feed and we put it on the kids’ profile on JioHostar.
The engagement was very encouraging. So I think that is how we look to broad-base the game and not get comfortable (around the idea) that it is IPL, everybody watches it. That’s not the approach that we have. We want that engagement to be meaningful.
When there is a match between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings, for example, why is it billed as a match between Rohit Sharma and MS Dhoni? Is it a conscious choice?
The likes of Dhoni, Rohit and (Virat) Kohli are stars and they speak to a wider audience. There’s a universal appeal to these names.
This season, we have carefully and mindfully crafted the narrative of ‘Gen Gold’ and ‘Gen Bold’. It can be them facing each other or them playing with each other. You know Abhishek Sharma facing Jasprit Bumrah or Suryakumar Yadav playing with Tilak Varma. Even in our creatives, you will see two pictures from each team. That is a tribute to both generations.