While most of India is still soaking in Saturday’s humungous ICC cricket world cup victory, there’s another cricket tournament waiting to entertain viewers in less than a week. The Indian Premier League (IPL) kicks off on April 8 in Chennai. Broadcaster Set Max said that more than 90% of the ad inventory is sold out. CNBC-TV18’s Nikita Rana reports on whether the viewer and sponsor interest match the World Cup.
More than 68 million people in India watched the India-Sri Lanka final. If the World Cup fever rubs off on IPL, the result can only be positive. At least, broadcaster Set Max is hoping for that.
This year, Set Max will earn close to Rs 1000 crore from the tournament, which is a 43% increase from last year’s Rs 650-700 crore. The channel said that they started the selling process about eight months back and closed most deals with advertisers before the World Cup began.
Rohit Gupta, President of Multi Screen Media said, “Post the World Cup, as far as IPL is concerned, there haven’t been any direct impact on the spot rates. The last couple of deals have been at Rs 6.5 lakh per 10 seconds. We’ve sold out now. The rates will only go up in the last five-seven games. We will launch the packages in the middle of May. From now on, there is no major change as far as our selling pattern goes.”
While team India’s performance hasn’t directly benefited IPL on Set Max in terms of ad rates, it did wonders for ESPN Star Sports.
As India progressed in the tournament, spot rates on ESPN Star Sports went from approximately Rs 3.5 lakh in the initial stages to close to Rs 15 lakh in the quarter final stage and then finally to about Rs 20 lakh for the finals.
Companies like Volkswagen India and Amity University paid that price to be present on air during the India-Sri Lanka match.
Manu Sawhney, MD of ESPN Star Sports said, “This was a national reach. Without including India-Pakistan match, even till the 46th match, we have hit 173 million viewers. To give a perspective in 2007 in West Indies, it was 113 million viewers. It has gone up by 50%. If we look at IPL 3 last year, it across 60 matches delivered an overall reach of 143 million.”
According to media buyers, the average overall rating of the IPL might be higher than the 3-5 average rating that the World Cup will clock. While the ratings of the finals are not in yet, the India- Pakistan semifinal averaged at a 22 rating across six metros according to TAM Sports. This is 10 points higher than the 12.33 rating in India’ s quarter final clash against Australia.
In terms of revenues, Set Max is likely to reach ESPN Star Sports’ earnings, but media buyers don’t expect viewership to be anywhere close to what the India matches got.
