T he first day of the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 cricket tournament was disappointing not only for losers Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings — defending champions and runners-up respectively — but also for the advertisers and media planners, owing to a 16 per cent dip in TV viewership ratings on SET MAX over last year.
According to the viewership data provided by overnight TV audience measurement agency Audience Measurement and Analytics Ltd (aMap), the television ratings for the first two matches matches stood at 3.6 per cent (Mumbai Indians versus Chennai Super Kings) and 3.8 per cent (Royal Challengers Bangalore versus Rajasthan Royals) respectively, compared to 4.3 per cent for the first match of IPL’s inaugural season (Kolkata Knight Riders versus Royal Challengers Bangalore on April 18, 2008).
These ratings are based on cable homes and among viewers in the 15-plus age group in the top six cities, a standard parameter used by ratings agencies and media planners for measuring the sports genre of TV channels. India has about 86 million cable homes.
However, about 1.4 million additional viewers logged on to SET MAX on the first day. According to the aMap data, about seven million viewers tuned in on Saturday to watch the first-two IPL matches, compared to about 5.6 million viewers that saw the inaugural IPL match last year.
On the seeming discrepancy between the rising number of viewers but lower ratings, Amit Varma, CEO, aMap, said the average time spent by the viewers on the channel was less than last year on a match-to-match comparison.
The average time spent by viewers on SET MAX stood at about 32 minutes on Saturday compared to about 50 minutes for the first match of last year’s IPL, the aMap data said.
The dip in viewership numbers for IPL matches has not surprised media agencies. Explaining the reasons for it, Anita Nayyar, chief executive of Havas Media India, said, “We expected a decline in viewership ratings on two counts. First, the novelty factor was missing since this is the second year. This trend is also noticeable for realty shows that air for the second or third time. Second, IPL moving out of India has also contributed to the decline in ratings.”
Nayyar said lower viewership ratings were expected for the weekday matches, but she expected viewerwship to gather momentum towards the latter half of IPL.
For SET MAX, the first day turned out to be encouraging in terms of advertising spends. According to the aMap data, between the two IPL matches and its own IPL programming (Extraa Innings), SET MAX aired about 640 advertising spots of 10-seconds each. The top advertisers were telecom (140 spots), automobiles (70 spots) and durables (55 spots), which together consumed nearly 40 per cent of the on-air advertising time, said a top aMap executive.
Media agency sources said Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Heinz and Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) were among the top 17 brands that advertised on SET MAX on the first day of IPL and the effective spot rates ranged from Rs 2.25 lakh to Rs 2.50 lakh.
Also, on April 18, SET MAX generated the highest gross rating points (GRPs) of 61.7 among all genre of TV channels owing to IPL matches. But the GRPs of Star Plus, Zee TV and other entertainment channels also registered double-digit growth over the same period last week, indicating a fragmented viewership pattern, says the aMap data.
The GRPs are the currency used for determining the ad rates across channels. It is calculated by adding the TV ratings of all programmes aired on a channel during a 24-hour period. IPL will be played till May 24 and there are 57 more matches scheduled between the eight league teams.
Also read:
April 18: It's a cricket tournament, it's a TV extravaganza ...it's IPL!
