Lalit Modi can be forgiven for feeling sanguine. His Indian Premier League has scored over a multi-nation tournament — the World Cup, no less.
Sunday’s India-South Africa fixture (not involving a minnow, in case you are sceptical), a showcase match in the ICC World Cup Twenty20, attracted 7.3 million viewers in the six metropolitan cities.
In contrast, this year’s IPL’s average viewership was 8 million in the same cities, according to television audience monitoring agency aMap.
Notably, IPL was shown on SET Max, a pay channel available only through cable and DTH. The World Cup, on the other hand, is available on STAR Sports, a pay channel, as well as Doordarshan, which is free to air and available even if you still depend on a large iron antenna on your roof. While 4.2 million viewers saw it on STAR, the other 3.1 million saw it on Doordarshan.
For the India-Afghanistan match (involving a minnow), India’s first tie this World Cup which was played on Saturday, the viewership of the two channels was even less, at 5.1 million. Of this, 2.8 million was on STAR Sports.
Looking at it from another angle, the first six matches of the World Cup on STAR Cricket have received average television rating (TVR) of 0.93 in the six metros. IPL-3, which concluded on April 25, had an average TVR of 4.3 in the same cities. TVR is a function of the number of viewers seeing a programme for a stipulated period.
The ICC World Cup Twenty20, which started on April 30 in West Indies, achieved its highest TVR of 2.2 for the India-South Africa match. India-Afghanistan got a TVR of 1.1. For the same matches, the TVR on Doordarshan was 1.4 for the former and 1.1 for the latter.