Behind the IPL magic

This year’s IPL has drawn to a close. And what a season it was! Arguably the best season ever, since the tournament began a decade ago. For a purist like me, it took a while to imagine life beyond Test cricket and one-day internationals. After all, how could a 20-over match ever be a true test of skill and temperament? But I’ve come to accept, somewhat belatedly, that the T-20 format is not just here to stay, but will continue to flourish in the years ahead. And while I will continue to relish good quality Test cricket, there is no doubt in my mind that T-20 has now become mainstream, while Test cricket and one-dayers have been gently relegated to the sidelines.

I guess that’s how modern-day marketing of sports works. In today’s fast-paced world, audiences don’t quite have the time for long-drawn encounters. Especially, broadcast audiences with a remote in their hands. With this year’s IPL, live streaming over the mobile is now emerging as a formidable force in its own right. And increasingly, both broadcast and digital audiences will drive the economics of tournaments like IPL. Don’t forget that the millions of eyeballs that tournaments like IPL generate on TV and internet prompted Star TV to plonk an eye-popping $2.39 billion for global television and digital rights for a five-year period.

According to data available with BARC, which measures and tracks television audiences, last year, IPL’s total TV viewership for the first 52 matches in IPL 10 was 1.07 billion impressions. In this year’s edition, it went up 14 per cent to 1.22 billion impressions. For matches 44-52, the growth was nearly 16 per cent.

So what did Star do right?

Smart segmentation: For a cricket connoisseur like me, Star TV borrowed a leaf out of prime-time European football telecasts. Their pre- and post-match shows — branded as DugOut — on the premium Star Sports Select channel were a revelation, superbly crafted with some of the finest cricketers keeping you one step ahead of the game. It was intense, yet entertaining and provided an insightful, inside track on the game. Cricketers like Sangakkara, Kumble, Dean Jones, Scott Styris and others helped you get inside the mind of the players and captains, supported by using smart graphics.

In contrast, Sony’s telecast of IPL in previous years made the cardinal mistake of dumbing it down for mass audiences and ended up alienating the more sophisticated viewers.

At the same time, to expand viewership, IPL was made available in as many as six languages on TV (the finals were telecast in eight languages) on the internet. In fact, for the finals though, Star tried to integrate movie and TV stars to expand viewership.

From all accounts, the southern language feeds helped Star expand viewership in the Southern states. But in the core Hindi belt, the growth in audiences wasn’t much. The reason? Sony would typically telecast the IPL matches on SET Max, primarily a movie channel which delivered strong viewership, compared to a sports channel. Star apparently took a business call to focus on driving subscription/distribution revenue in the massive Hindi belt for its bouquet of channels. We’ll need to wait for the final numbers to assess how that strategy worked.

DrivingDigital: In single TV households, there’s invariably a fight for the remote, particularly during prime-time. In the initial phase of the IPL, I faced the same issue. Hotstar evolved a special sports package at Rs 299 that allowed folks like me to watch the matches uninterrupted. While the third-party validated numbers aren’t available, the surge in smartphone viewing was driven by this affordable pricing strategy.

Fortunately, as the tournament progressed, the buzz around the matches, the competitive rivalry around the various teams grew at home and at work. And to my pleasant surprise, I found the wife actually quit watching her favourite TV soaps and warmed up to the idea of the IPL.

For young audiences on digital, Hotstar evolved programming that was tailored for them. By all accounts, the Watch-n-Play prediction-based contest pushed up viewership and engagement levels. With estimated peak viewership of 5.5 million for every match—and touching 10.7 million for the finals, the challenge was to ensure that tech systems did not crash even once. Media experts reckon this such concurrent viewership on the internet is unprecedented, even at a global level.

So here’s the rub: what will such high-octane coverage of IPL do to Test match cricket? Will it hasten its decline? Or will Test cricket be forced to reinvent itself for the post-television era? India’s refusal to play a day-night Test match in Adelaide in its upcoming tour of Australia in December this year has been widely criticised by experts like Ian Chappell. Irrespective of whether India is ready or not for this new form of Test cricket, there’s no denying that the writing on the wall is clear. With dwindling spectator and viewer interest, the economics of Test cricket will become increasingly untenable, not just for ICC and cricket boards around the world, but also for broadcasters like Star and Sony. It remains to be seen how long it is before Test cricket is forced to adapt to this new era.

The writer is co-founder, Founding Fuel