Explore Jio Cinema’s groundbreaking marketing strategy – streaming IPL matches for free. Discover its potential game-changing impact, from loss leader strategy to cross-selling opportunities, and the anticipated dominance in ad revenue during IPL 2023.
Jio is streaming IPL matches entirely free this year. In fact, after streaming FIFA and Women’s Premier League for free, this is the third time in the past 5 months, that Jio Cinema is streaming a big tournament at absolutely no cost, even for non- Jio users.
This strategy is not being used for the first time in India. In fact, initially Hotstar too streamed IPL matches at absolutely no cost.
Why might this be a game changer for Jio, let us understand it:
1. Loss leader strategy– They’re trying to repeat the marketing technique that has worked best for them with Jio Sim. While streaming IPL free for 1-2 years, they can gradually follow this loss leader strategy, i.e.
- they can slowly start a subscription for the service, or
- They can either start a strategy to offer the no cost service to Jio Sim users and a subscription requirement to non-jio users.
So next time we’re recharging our phones, we might be tempted to switch to Jio, a strategy which couldn’t be used by companies like Hotstar and Netflix in India.
2. Cross Selling to a huge customer base– Jio is going to benefit immensely by cross selling its products. Jio Sim is an example, whereas it can benefit in a lot more ways as users are only going to increase. And once ‘Jio Cinema’ becomes a habit, people are going to switch to it for much more OTT content. After a successful FIFA World Cup 2022 and WPL 2023, the platform can push its subscriber base to a new high with IPL 2023. This could eventually put Jio Cinema at par with YouTube, which remains India’s biggest video-streaming platform with 520 million monthly users.
3. Ad- revenue– A report by Media Partners Asia projects that Jio Cinema will grab 60 per cent of IPL 2023’s total ad sales, and digital ad revenue will surpass TV ad revenue for the first time. Thus, paying a whooping Rs. 23000 crores to buy the media rights for IPL streaming would not a be a big dent to Jio, owing to its well-articulated course of action. Further, it already has a brilliant engaging content to offer, apart from the live streaming of matches.
Jio has been the best when it comes to use of marketing strategies. It has clearly shown us the use of the popular Ansoff’s marketing matrix in the best possible way.
It’s time to see how Jio is able to achieve its objective.
