A staggering INR 700 crore was spent by brands on influencers and content creators for the 2026 edition of the Indian Premier League. This meant 0.25% of the global influencer marketing spend for the year was concentrated on the two-month tournament. This was almost three times the spend on the tournament in 2023 (INR 250 crore), according to data shared by Boomlet.

The interesting part was that 10% of this INR 700 crore budget went to nano influencers. However, the engagement this segment of influencers generated was most valuable at 43%. Nano influencers are those with fewer than 10,000 followers. While celebrities (A list talent) and ‘mega influencers’ had a combined 57% of this budget, their combined engagement was only 2.3%. Nano influencers charged between INR 5,000-25,000 per post, while mega influencers and celebrities demanded between INR 40 lakhs to INR 5 crore per post/per day, depending on the requirement.

This proves that brands overinvest in celebrities and underinvest in nano creators.

The bigger data point for brands to consider is that of all the digital ad spends, 16-18% of it goes to content creators and influencers.

Unsurprisingly, Instagram dominated with 48% of the content being shared on the social media platform, followed by YouTube (28%) and X (12%).

The best-performing content was created for post-match, which generated the same amount of engagement as live content and pre-match combined.

According to data available, Swiggy spent between INR 5-15 crore on the IPL without any official sponsorship. They created 45% of their content using micro-influencers, 30% from nano-influencers, 20% from macro, with 5% featuring mega influencers or celebs.

Its partnership with JioStar for the livestream, which allowed users to order food directly while watching the tournament, resulted in more than 6,200 orders per minute during the tournament.

Scan to read the full report here.

Data partner: Boomlet