For one, marketing heads and advertisers who got on to the Indian Premier League (IPL) early are smiling all the way to the bank.
The huge viewership that the matches gained during the 45 days, pushed up advertisement rates for 10-second spots to Rs 5-10 lakhs, which was marked at Rs 2 lakh per 10 seconds at the start of the tournament.
Interestingly, this is more than the Rs 8 lakh per 10 second rate for the T20 World Cup final between India and Pakistan last year, although the TRP viewership rating of the World Cup final was 9.21, much higher than the most-popular final IPL match which saw a rating of 7.7.
According to TAM Media Research, for the target C&S 15+ in the all-India market, even the matches with least viewership had clocked TRP rating of 3.
So far, TAM data is available for 49 matches of which around four matches are rated around the 3 TRP mark.
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Around 13 matches have scored 6+ to 7+.
The rest have been above 4 and 5 TRPs.
Media buying agencies peg IPL as the biggest advertising revenue spinner at least for now every year.
According to Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director of Madison Communications, the first IPL season has mopped up about Rs 350 crore of advertising revenues during the 44 days, across television advertising, team and ground sponsorships.
The spends are around Rs 220 crore by Sony on TV advertising and Rs 130 crore on logos on team attire, branding, etc, which is significant considering television advertising industry is pegged at Rs 7,000 crore.
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is expected to make a profit of Rs 350 crore in the first IPL year itself, higher than its profit of Rs 235 crore in the whole of 2007.
Moreover, IPL is expected to fetch revenues in the range of Rs 1,000 - 1,500 crore a year into cricket.
Set Max marketshare has risen to almost 29 per cent from around 6 per cent before the IPL season.
Its share of prime time has gone up to 29 per cent, about 5 per cent higher than the marketshare of the top nine Hindi general entertainment channels put together.
That is not all.
According to industry estimates, television advertising revenue will touch Rs 8,000 crore in 2008, and Sony alone is projected to rake in Rs 650 crore of advertising revenue from the second IPL year.
Another assumption - of weekends performing better than weekdays