IPL 9's Tremendous Increase in Viewership

By siliconindia | Monday, 09 May 2016, 12:49 Hrs

BENGALURU: The Vivo Indian Premier League (IPL) is constantly drawing spectators at a continually increasing rate, even as only half the numbers of matches have been played, reports Ravi Teja Sharma and Gaurav Bhatia for ET Bureau. The ninth season of the IPL consists of total 60 matches between different teams.

In the first three weeks, with only 25 matches being played, the IPL tournament has been witnessed by more audiences than that of the freshly completed T20 World Cup, according to statistics from Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), India. These 25 matches were aired on channels such as Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony Six HD, Sony ESPN along with Sony ESPN HD and have listed an overall of 147 million viewership. This recent listing is way ahead of 123 million spectators recorded during the entire T20 World Cup series.

The highest rated match in the first week of the IPL cricket season was between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Sunrisers Hyderabad that recorded 24.137 million viewers. In comparison, the India-Pakistan match in the T20 World Cup registered 23.613 million spectators on Star Sports 1 and 30.173 million on Star Sports 3. Meanwhile, the spectacular India-West Indies game caught 24.982 million viewers’ attention on Star Sports 1 and 33.516 million on Star Sports 3.

The IPL 9’s markets, which developed tremendously during the third week, are in the regions of Mumbai, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. It is another interesting fact that 46 percent viewership of this IPL season on Sony channels has been female spectators in particular and in general viewers falls under the age group of 22-30.