David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…And this one game at a time thing is so genius, too, because the way that they make the whole thing work with this player auction, the players are moving around a lot. You’re a fan of a team, but your favorite player might go somewhere else. So if you’re a fan of a player, you’re fans of multiple teams. What ends up happening is you end up becoming a fan of the league. You have a team you like, you have players you like, but since the players are everywhere, you just like IPL, period. If you live in Mumbai, you probably have affinity for the Mumbai Indians, but you probably have more affinity to Virat Kohli or [...] or et cetera. You’re not going to miss those games. And you may not speak that primary language there. In fact, you probably don’t. So all of this works incredibly well. You’ve got the major tailwind of Reliance Jio, you’ve got the professionalization, you’ve got the local languages. The 2019 IPL final match is broadcast on 17 channels across the country in different languages plus digital over the top. The final viewership numbers, best estimates are in 300–400 million unique viewers that are watching the 2019 IPL final. Just for context on that, the most recent 2025 Super Bowl was the biggest Super Bowl ever, and I think de facto that makes it the biggest broadcast TV event in US history. Ben, do you remember what the viewership numbers were on this 2025 Super Bowl comped against the 2019 IPL final? You told me this recently, 120–130 million, something like that?…

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