IPL 10 viewership jumps 24%

More people watched the league in 2017, but with 41% women viewers the gender skew persisted

The Vivo Indian Premier League finished its 2017 edition on a high as the final between Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiant became the most viewed match of the tournament at 39.4 million impressions. The tournament averaged 21.18 million impressions per match, 24 per cent higher than the average impressions recorded per match last year (17.11 million) according to television audience measurement agency BARC India. This year’s data however considers only 59 matches, as opposed to the total of 60 since one match (Royal Challengers Bangalore versus Sunrisers Hyderabad) was washed out. 

The league, in its tenth year with the 2017 edition, has become a tent-pole sports property for advertisers. It has grown its advertiser portfolio, not only in terms of volume but also in terms of the spot ad rates for TV advertising and sponsorship rates. This year, Sony Pictures Network India (SPN), the official broadcaster of the tournament raked in an estimated Rs 1,300 crore in advertising and sponsorship revenues, with 14 sponsors and commercial partners on board. 

Traditionally the IPL has been more popular with men (59 per cent of the total in 2016 and 2017), which is in keeping with the general audience profile for all T20 tournaments. The IPL is different from the rest however, in terms of the age profile of its viewers, it drew a younger audience with kids and youth (4-21 years) making up 29 per cent of the viewership pie in 2016. The age wise breakdown of the viewership pie is still to be announced by the measurement agency. 

Brand participation in the tournament has always been high, especially since it provides advertisers with a single vehicle to reach two target audiences: men and kids. Shantiswarup Panda, chief marketing officer at Lifestyle Business, Raymond Limited says, “IPL has delivered impactful reach amongst our target consumers over years. We have seen good growth of over 10 per cent in viewership numbers across urban markets this year over last year.” Raymond, along with brands like Vodafone, Amazon and Yes Bank, has been a big advertiser in 2017. 

Like many of the partner brands, Raymond uses the IPL platform for various purposes from increasing brand visibility to introducing new products and Panda claims that these have received impactful reach through IPL. Vodafone used the tournament to convey its data promise to viewers, using an elderly couple who are not familiar with the process to show how simple and quick the network is. Unlike competitors Jio, Airtel it did not wade into any controversial claims about speed or price but used a story to differentiate the brand.

A big part of the tournament’s allure for advertisers has been its fairly diverse reach. Even though there are more male viewers, the tournament draws a fair share of women viewers too. Of the total viewership, 12.52 million impressions were gathered from the male audience, while the remaining 8.65 million impressions came from the female audience. 

Among the states, the Maharashtra/Goa circle recorded the maximum impressions per match (4.5 million), followed by AP/Telangana at 2.1 million. This is in keeping with the 2016 trends. In terms of rural-urban split, the gap was narrower than the female-male split in viewership. Almost neck and neck, the urban audiences contributed to 11.54 million impressions per match while rural audiences stood at 9.63 million impressions per match. With the urban audience accounting for 54 per cent of the audience pie in 2017, the rural share has risen from the previous year, from 39 per cent to 46 per cent.

Apart from television viewership, the 2017 edition of the IPL also saw immense traction on social media. According to a report released by Maxus (an agency under WPP), this was the ‘buzziest’ instalment of the IPL, and the final match was the most talked about match this season on social media. However, where the male female audience ratio on TV was 59:41, on social media it was 83:17. The report also threw up some interesting observations. For example, while Delhi accounts for the second most number of tweets around the topic, their team doesn’t feature in the most spoken about teams. The most talked about teams include Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Kolkata Knight Riders and Rising Pune Supergiant (not in that order). Maxus says it uses real time tweets and Facebook posts for its analysis. According to the report, M S Dhoni was the most popular player this season, followed KKR captain Gautam Gambhir and Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma. 

KKR, even though it never made it to the final match, dominated conversations throughout the season. The team got 1.3 million mentions on social media, followed by Mumbai Indians at 922,000 mentions and RCB at 906,000 mentions. Now, does that say something about the most talkative group on social media?