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Perhaps for the first time in the history of Indian sports broadcasting, a non-cricket sport is getting prominence on not one, but two channel networks. It's raining kabaddi leagues on Indian television currently as rival networks Star India and Multi Screen Media both have kabaddi leagues on air. The combined reach of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) on STAR India and Wave World Kabaddi League on MSM amounts to 18 million between 10 and 16 August.
While PKL on STAR Sports 2 and STAR Gold has had a better outing in terms of reach, Sony Six is not far behind with reach numbers on the WKL. For the six games aired between August 10 and August 16, PKL registered a reach of 10.15 million while WKL was sampled by 8.2 million viewers across the nation.
However, this was the third week of telecast of PKL and the launch week of WKL. When one compares the launch reach for the two leagues, PKL outshines WKL by a huge margin since the opening night reach for PKL alone was 22 million. Both the leagues are telecast over the weekends. The major difference in the broadcast of PKL and WKL is that the former is held completely in India while the latter is a global league.
The WKL started in London and through the course of the tournament will travel to Italy, Canada, the UAE and the US before arriving in India and Pakistan for the last leg. The time difference between the hosting countries and Indian prime time has also impacted the reach of WKL. Experts believe the Indian leg of the league could give it a boost. While PKL (started on July 26) will conclude on August 31, WKL, which flagged off on August 9, will go one for four-and-a-half months.
Reach indicates the number of viewers who tuned in to the event for at least a minute. It is a parameter to gauge how many people have sampled the telecast. Viewership is a measurement metric that gives an idea of the depth in TV viewing since the number denotes the number of people watching the programme at any given time during the telecast. In other words, reach gives an idea of how many viewers have 'snacked' on a telecast, while viewership in thousands gives an idea of the number of persistent viewers.
