From overs to overkill: IPL ads hit saturation point

Do you remember when the Indian Premier League (IPL) was launched? A massive campaign and an unmissable sound went with it.

Hailed as Manoranjan ka Baap (the big daddy of entertainment), it was all-out entertainment from the word go. Slowly, it became the biggest media event in the country.

With over 57.8 crore viewers tuning in during the first innings of the Tata IPL 2025 finals as per reports, the sporting event marked a defining moment in India’s digital sports landscape. The number of advertisers participating in the IPL 2025 grew by 27%, reaching over 105, while the count of brands increased by 28% to more than 190 as per industry reports.

IPL has also brought about an enormous cultural shift in the way we watch sports. It is not some sporting event that you watch once a year, it is the biggest entertainment event of the country. It is one of the few events which not only breaks the geographical barriers but engages all geographies on a regional level.

There have been national events engaging the entire country, but not at this micro-level. While cricket creates the pull, it is the content that hooks and engages the viewer. It enters your life at conception.

You start seeing hoardings on the roads with players of your regional team, sports pages in the newspaper on team stats and forecasts, the IPL conversation picks up on social media, and influencers jumping on the bandwagon with content around players and teams.

Every other TV commercial features three players for a team and the brand as a sponsor. Every brand or business wants to be a part of the carnival and get noticed. But herein lies the problem: clutter.

In 10 seconds, how differentiated can you get? Shoots are rushed; players can only give a very short window to all the brands, and as marketers, our task is to leverage them to the max. After all the hustle and hours of planning, brands end up with an IPL campaign that no one remembers.

An opportunity for advertisers

IPL is India’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, a massive entertainment spectacle where advertisers go all out with their creativity and budgets to capture attention. However, simply bombarding viewers with the same messaging after every over won’t build brand preference. It is more likely to annoy them.

Even presence across media platforms won’t be able to help. For your communication to truly stand out, it needs to be as entertaining as the IPL itself—if not more.

However, this is not true for every brand. Some brands have been able to adapt to this shift. They have realised that the key to standing out is changing the narrative from selling to entertaining and engaging.

In the latest season, one brand, Dream 11, did manage to create a memorable campaign. It created a long-format content piece before IPL that generated massive buzz. The piece's success was due not only to its star value but also to the strength of its script and execution.

Then came the extensions of 10 seconds each, which ran all through IPL with a focus on social media content and influencer campaigns. The idea is not to create a campaign but a culture IP—this one lasted the entire season without being repetitive.

A quest for mindshare

During the course of two months, when IPL is broadcast, the consumer is exposed to a wide range of content. Brands pushing themselves on every possible platform to occupy mind space in that clutter is becoming nearly impossible. Culture IP is not a TVC; it is not the 360-degree campaign that we are accustomed to.

A cultural IP is not dependent on the demographics, geography, or even the media platform alone. It needs to adapt to generation-wise changing cultural values and belief systems, entertainment being the hygiene.

The IPL playbook for brands is about moving beyond traditional advertising to truly integrate with the cultural fabric of the generation. It is a strategic blend of high-impact advertising, innovative content creation, and deep engagement that leverages the passion and scale of India’s biggest sporting spectacle.

— Abhishek Jain, business director, Virtue Asia.