The online rating agencies are at war over the actual viewership and TRP rating for IPL. While some agencies maintain that IPL Season 2 has failed to match last year’s enthusiasm, some hold a view quite to the opposite effect. When Indian Premier League debuted last year, the Indian audience was just overjoyed to get something as grand as this! This huge interest on the part of cricket fans was translated into huge ad revenues for the media on the one hand and expansion of the customer base for the companies that spent millions on advertisement. But this year, the picture is slightly different, holds a section of media agencies. This year, the tournament is not receiving the same level of enthusiasm from the viewers across India. This wavering of attention is not something that is utterly unexpected. With the games played outside India, the passionate backing of local supporters has become irrelevant. At the same time, with relegating mostly to a television reality show, an extended viewership was badly needed for this year’s Indian Premier League.

When it comes to assess the popularity of a television show, TRP ratings provide the ultimate yardstick. And the TRP rating for the first day’s telecast of IPL match from South Africa was 5.55 per cent, as opposed to 8.21 per cent on IPL’s first day last year. However, at the same time, INTAM Media Research informed that this year’s opening day broadcast from South Africa attracted more than 12 million viewers and the number is almost same as last year’s. Last year, throughout its 44 days span, the IPL managed to notch up a TRP rating at an average of five per cent drawing roughly 1 billion viewers throughout the league. Although this year, the beginning does not show the promise as big as last year’s, the media experts say, it is going to catch up as the tournament rolls on to its more exciting part.

This drop into TRP rating has been attributed to many factors. When the Business Standard blamed it on the missing of the novelty factor of the event, aMap Chief Executive Amit Verma attributed it to the lack of fervor usually associated with Twenty-20 live cricket matches. “Even though larger numbers of viewers watched the first two matches, curiosity did not sustain as much as last year. This has been attributed to the matches missing the gutsy hitting, the sixes, the high scores associated with a Twenty20 game,” he said.

But the SET MAX is not the one to subscribe to the idea that IPL viewer ship has dropped this year. After all, spread of such a perception would be highly pernicious for them in the industry. A waning interest in IPL means loss of ad-revenues that runs in billions for the media. Based on aMap data, SET Max says that there has been actually a jump of straight 2 million viewers for this year’s seven matches. They also insist that three out of the seven matches had higher viewership ratings than the same matches of IPL Season 1.  

Now, this has far reaching significance for the media agencies, who invest in air times on the basis of a program’s TRP rating as well as its ability to connect to people. If stats are to be believed, advertisers have consumed around 245 minutes (about four hours) of on-air advertising time during the seven IPL matches played so far. This amounts to roughly 20 minutes of advertising per 60 minutes of actual program. According to the industry insiders, this trend clearly shows that advertisers are confident about the positive response of the IPL and its expanding reach over the consumers.

When the corporate houses and media agencies keep on fighting with data and stats, common cricket fans keep on enjoying the heady mix of glamour, glitz and dynamism all coming into the delicious package called Indian Premier League, unfazed by the issues of TRPs and air times. And this is cricket in India - while the men that make business out of cricket will keep on bothering themselves with the difficult task of matching debit with credit, the common mass for whom cricket is no lesser than religion will go on having fun out of it!

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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