Live Events Beyond Cricket — Can Award Shows and Reality TV Sustain CTV’s Premium Ad Rates

Every connected TV sales deck in India has a cricket slide, and for good reason. The IPL, the ICC tournaments and the marquee bilateral series are the closest thing the country has to a guaranteed national audience. They deliver scale, emotion and appointment viewing, which is exactly what premium advertisers pay for. They also deliver something less comfortable for the platforms that stream them: dependence.

When a single genre accounts for so much of a platform’s advertising value, the commercial health of the whole business begins to follow the fixture list. A strong season lifts rates, sponsorship sell-outs and sentiment. A quiet quarter exposes how thin the premium layer becomes once the bat and ball are put away.

That is why the industry’s attention is shifting towards a question that would have sounded academic a few years ago. Can award shows, reality television and other live spectacles carry premium CTV ad rates on their own? The answer matters not just for streamers but for every brand that has been asked to pay cricket-like prices for something that is not cricket.

Why Live Commands a Premium

To understand the challenge, it helps to be clear about what advertisers are actually buying when they pay a premium for live content. It is not simply reach. Reach can be bought far more cheaply across the long tail of on-demand viewing. What the premium secures is a combination of attention, simultaneity and context.

Live viewing is lean-forward and communal. Audiences watch in real time, often with family, often with a second screen in hand, and they cannot skip to the end. Ads placed within these moments benefit from the surrounding energy. A brand that appears in the break after a wicket, a winner announcement or a surprise elimination inherits a slice of that emotional charge.

Live is also one of the few remaining formats that delivers a shared national moment, and shared moments are what advertisers long associated with television. Streaming fragmented the audience into millions of private queues. Live events pull people back into the same room at the same time, which is why they have become the anchor of the premium inventory model on connected TV.

The question is whether that logic travels. A cricket match has stakes, a clear narrative and a loyal following that spans age groups and regions. Can a ceremony celebrating the year’s best films, or a reality competition stretched across weeks, replicate even part of that gravity?

The Case for Reality Television

Reality formats have the stronger claim of the two. Long-running franchises such as Bigg Boss, Indian Idol and Kaun Banega Crorepati have shown that unscripted television can build habits that rival any scripted drama. Viewers return night after night, follow contestants like characters, and carry the conversation into social media and family discussions.

That habit is commercially valuable. A format that delivers a predictable audience across dozens of episodes allows advertisers to run sustained campaigns rather than one-off bursts. It also creates integration opportunities that go beyond the standard spot. Brands can sponsor challenges, weave products into tasks, and attach their name to recurring segments in ways that feel native to the show.

Streaming has added new layers to this. Live feeds, voting mechanics, behind-the-scenes content and weekend specials extend the format beyond a nightly broadcast. For advertisers, this creates a richer canvas: interactive units, shoppable moments and audience data that linear television could never supply.

The limitation is intensity. Reality television builds loyalty gradually, and its audience is more skewed in profile than a national cricket final. A franchise may deliver deep engagement with a particular demographic, which suits many categories, but it does not routinely deliver the broad, mass-market sweep that justifies the very top of the rate card. The premium is earned, but it is a different premium, based on engagement and fit rather than sheer scale.

Award Shows: Spectacle With a Shorter Season

Award shows present a more complicated picture. They are glamorous, culturally visible and rich in conversation. Red carpet moments, performances and viral acceptance speeches generate enormous social chatter, and the association with film and entertainment gives brands a halo of aspiration.

Yet the format has structural constraints. An awards ceremony is a single evening, or at best a handful across the calendar. It cannot offer the sustained frequency that reality franchises provide or the sheer volume of inventory that a cricket season creates. For a platform trying to justify premium pricing across a quarter, a one-night event is a highlight rather than a foundation.

There is also the matter of audience behaviour. Many viewers treat award shows as a casual second-screen experience, dipping in for performances and skipping the long stretches between them. When ceremonies are later cut into clips and shared on social platforms, a considerable share of the cultural value migrates away from the live broadcast. That undermines the very simultaneity that gives live its premium.

None of this makes award shows unattractive. It makes them a specific kind of asset. Sold well, they offer prestige, category-specific tie-ins for fashion, beauty, automobiles and consumer electronics, and a strong platform for brand storytelling. Sold as a direct substitute for cricket, they disappoint.

What Advertisers Are Actually Weighing

On the buying side, the conversation has become more discerning. Large advertisers have grown used to the idea that CTV commands higher rates than other digital video, justified by screen size, viewing environment and the assumption of attentive households. The proposition holds for the best content. It is less convincing when applied evenly across everything labelled live.

Media planners are increasingly asking questions that go well beyond impressions. Who is watching, and how many are co-viewing? How much of the audience stays through the ad break? Are the viewers unique to this event, or are they the same households already reached through cricket? And does the environment suit the brand’s message?

These questions matter because premium pricing is only sustainable when it is backed by evidence. A cost per thousand that is several times higher than standard video must be defended with proof of superior attention, incremental reach or stronger outcomes. When a platform cannot show this, advertisers lean on the volume discount, push for bundled deals, or shift budgets back towards cheaper inventory.

There is also a quiet resistance to paying cricket-level prices for non-cricket audiences. Brands accept that cricket is a unique asset. They are less willing to accept that every live format deserves comparable pricing, and platforms that overreach risk damaging goodwill that took years to build.

The Platform Dilemma

For streaming services, the pressure to diversify is real. Sports rights are expensive, concentrated and subject to intense competition. Relying on them to carry the advertising business creates volatility that investors and sales teams would rather avoid. Building a portfolio of live properties, each with its own audience and commercial logic, is a sensible hedge.

But a portfolio is not the same as a premium. The strongest platforms are learning to segment their live inventory rather than price it uniformly. Cricket stays at the top tier. Marquee reality franchises sit in a strong second tier, sold on engagement and integration. Award shows and one-off spectacles are packaged as high-impact, high-prestige events with tailored pricing and category exclusivity.

This segmentation is healthier for the long term because it aligns price with value. It also lets platforms be more honest with advertisers, which builds trust. A buyer who understands precisely what each property delivers is far more likely to return than one who feels they were sold a promise that cricket numbers would reappear.

The economics of ad-supported streaming add another layer. Platforms must balance subscription revenue and advertising, and many are experimenting with tiers that carry ads at lower subscription prices. As the ad-supported base grows, so does the volume of inventory that needs to be sold. That tends to push average rates down unless the platform can maintain a clear premium layer, which is why protecting the integrity of live pricing matters so much.

Data, Interactivity and the New Premium

If scale cannot be replicated, what else can justify a premium? Increasingly, the answer lies in what connected TV can do that broadcast never could.

Interactivity is one part of it. Viewers can vote, explore a product, request more information or complete a purchase from within the viewing experience. For a reality finale or an awards night, this converts passive attention into measurable action. Advertisers can see not only that an ad was delivered but what the viewer did next.

Targeting is another. A platform with strong first-party data can allow a brand to reach specific households within a mass event, adjusting creative by region, language or audience segment. A single live broadcast can carry different messages to different homes, giving advertisers precision inside a moment that still feels communal. That blend of scale and relevance is something linear television struggled to match.

Measurement completes the picture. Premium rates become easier to defend when platforms can offer credible, independent verification of reach, attention and outcomes. As advertisers grow more demanding on proof, the platforms with the strongest measurement frameworks will be best placed to hold their pricing.

So, Can They Sustain It?

The honest answer is that it depends on how the premium is defined. If it means matching the rates that cricket commands, the answer is almost certainly no. No award show or reality franchise offers the same blend of national scale, emotional intensity and repeat frequency. Expecting them to do so sets them up to fail.

If the premium means a meaningful uplift over standard streaming inventory, supported by engagement, context and measurable outcomes, the answer is a cautious yes. Reality television, in particular, has the staying power and the audience habits to justify a durable premium. Award shows can sustain theirs as annual tentpoles, provided they are sold as prestige moments with clear category fit rather than as mass-reach vehicles.

The deeper lesson is about positioning. The platforms that will succeed beyond cricket are those that resist the temptation to treat every live event as a cricket substitute. They will build distinct commercial propositions around each property, price them honestly, and prove their value with data that advertisers can trust.

Cricket will remain the cornerstone of premium CTV advertising for the foreseeable future. But a cornerstone is not a building. The next phase of the market will be decided by whether the rest of the live calendar can be made to stand on its own merits, with advertisers paying for what each event genuinely delivers and not for what the brightest property once promised.