Gaming
Wavemaker India unveils earned equity report on IPL 2022
Mumbai: The real-time data intelligence solution provider, Wavemaker MESH, has revealed an earned equity report on IPL 2022. The report captures the social conversations around IPL 2022 based on multiple data points collated to create meaningful and actionable insights. The report analyses how the audience perception of IPL has evolved over the years. It focuses on the digital audience and uses data points like consumption data around digital content and also social and search insights.
The report has data sources from multiple consumer touch points across the digital ecosystem, ranging from social listening, video analytics in partnership with intuitive intelligence, and interaction data points collected from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. The methodology behind measuring earned equity draws from social listening, content analytics, and audience measurement.
Wavemaker plans to bring out an earned equity report on key properties, which will help brands add a qualitative layer to their decision-making process.
Talking about the report, Wavemaker India chief content officer & GroupM India head of branded content Karthik Nagarajan said, “The perceived value of a property today is measured in a uni-dimensional way. ‘Earned Equity’ is Wavemaker’s way of quantifying the ‘digital perception’ and sentiment around it. Along with complementing the traditional media metrics, these earned equity reports will help brands decide their associations with premium events.”
Key highlights of the report:
- When we talk about sporting events across the globe, the English Premier League emerges as the buzziest sporting event in the world. Just behind the EPL, we have the IPL, which has become the second-largest in the world and the buzziest sporting event in India. The popularity has been growing year on year and in 2022, with growth of over 300 per cent last year, the season garnered 334 million buzz, making it ahead of other global sporting events like the NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball.
- This season of IPL was unique in multiple ways, which is why the audience engagement was at its peak. After trailing in the number two spot for the past three consecutive seasons, RCB broke the jinx and emerged as the most popular team this season. The winner, ‘Gujarat Titans,’ was the sixth most popular team this season. One more interesting fact is that RCB has only seven per cent of fans from Karnataka cheering for the team. This clearly shows that in this event, the loyalty is not with the city/state team but with the franchise.
- IPL is growing as an opportunity for content creators and advertisers to engage with the audience. This season, the IPL received over 6.5 billion video views on digital platforms, representing a nearly 50 per cent increase over the previous year.
- This rise in popularity corresponds to the media’s assessment. The popularity of this sporting extravaganza, along with potential growth rates of digital, is the reason why digital rights were sold more than TV for 2023–27.
- For the third time in a row, Virat Kohli is the most popular player in the IPL 2022. The top three player spots have been the same for the last three years, with Virat, Dhoni, and Rohit on the leaderboard.
- Amongst the advertisers, Vi continues to lead the advertiser leaderboard by being the buzziest brand around IPL 2022 for the fourth time in a row. The “Fan of the Match” campaign has become a critical engagement event for the audience. Tata, the title sponsor, garnered the second spot this season, followed by Vivo, Dream 11 and Unacademy.
- IPL is synonymous with India’s Super Bowl and is the time of year when advertisers create engaging advertisements to make an impression on the audience. Creds had the top two most viral ads for “#Credbounty” this season, according to our technology partner Intuition Intelligence (Viral analytics and Insights provider). The nostalgia of the 90s content theme was the driving factor for the success. This was followed by the Cadbury 5 Star “#DoNothingLegend” ad, which incorporated humour around cricket’s third umpire.
Gaming
Sony raises PS5 prices for second time in under a year
US disc edition jumps $100 to $649.99 as memory costs surge.
MUMBAI: Sony just hit the pause button on affordable gaming because when memory prices skyrocket, even the Playstation has to pay the premium. Sony has announced its second price increase for the Playstation 5 range in less than a year, citing pressures in the global economic landscape and a sharp rise in memory component costs driven by AI demand.
In the US, the PS5 disc edition will rise from $549.99 to $649.99, a $100 hike while the digital edition increases to $599.99. The more powerful PS5 Pro will jump $150 to $899.99. The Playstation Portal remote player will also rise by $50 to $249.99. The new prices take effect on 2 April 2026.
Similar increases have been applied in the UK (£90 per model), Europe and Japan. Sony last raised PS5 prices in the US in August 2025.
“We know that price changes impact our community, and after careful evaluation, we found this was a necessary step to ensure we can continue delivering innovative, high-quality gaming experiences to players worldwide,” Sony said in a blog post.
The hikes come amid an unprecedented surge in memory prices, as manufacturers prioritise supply for AI data centres. Analysts say Sony had likely secured price protections for components that have now expired, forcing the company to protect its hardware margins.
Ampere Analysis research director of games Piers Harding-Rolls told CNBC that further increases from Microsoft and Nintendo would not be surprising, though Nintendo may hesitate to raise the price of its recently launched Switch 2 while establishing the new platform.
The increases arrive eight months before the highly anticipated release of GTA 6, which is expected to drive strong console sales. However, early reactions online have been a mix of disappointment and resignation, with growing concern that premium gaming is increasingly becoming a hobby for higher-income players.
In a sector already grappling with tariffs, inflation and component shortages, Sony’s move underscores a tough reality: even the most popular consoles are not immune to the rising cost of keeping up with the latest technology.
