Mumbai : With Team India doing well in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, more viewers are queuing up to watch the men in blue. The India-West Indies match — aired on 6th March — was viewed by 262 million people, according to TAM (television audience measurement) data among the CS4+ (cable and satellite market with viewers aged above four years) market. This makes it the second most viewed match of the World-Cup tournament.
The India-Windies match was aired on eight channels of the STAR India network and on Doordarshan’s National channel. Like all previous India matches, this was available in six languages — Hindi, English, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil and Kannada. The match got 13.1 TVR (television viewer rating) across the STAR network and Doordarshan. The match rated 10.9 TVR on the STAR network and 2.2 TVR on Doordarshan.
This number is second only to the India-Pakistan match on February 15, which reached 288 million viewers and garnered a rating of 14.8 TVR — 11.9 on STAR India and 2.9 on Doordarshan. The India-South Africa match, among the most anticipated ties in Pool B, had a reach of 257 million and ratings of 12.9 TVR — 10.5 TVR on STAR India and 2.4 TVR on Doordarshan.
The percentage of viewers of the Hindi and regional feeds is also steadily on the rise, with 80 per cent coming in from the non-English feed in the case of the India-West Indies match. For the India-Pakistan match, the non-English to English viewership ratio was 76:24 , the same as the India-South Africa match.
Multiple language feeds have helped STAR India increase viewership in the southern states. “Historically, viewership in the south has been lower than HSM (Hindi-speaking market), 23 per cent lower for the World Cup 2011 India matches. However, for the India-Pakistan match in this World Cup, the south garnered as much viewership as HSM, with Tamil contributing 64 per cent of viewers in the state. For the India-South Africa match, the Tamil feed garnered 88 per cent viewership of HSM,” said a STAR India spokesperson.
The total reach of the World Cup in the first two weeks (14th February to 7th March) across 29 matches is now 534 million.
Star extended the ‘Mauka’ campaign for the India West Indies game incorporating the festive celebrations on the occasion of Holi receiving overwhelming response from the fans. The India West Indies promo was watched by over 2.7 million fans as the campaign overall crossed over 17 million online views.
As the performance of the Indian team continues to be good, advertiser interest in the World Cup is on the rise. While at the start of the tournament, there were a fair number of brands that were sceptical of investing in the tournament.
The general consensus was that they would buy spots further down the tournament, depending on India’s performance. The only exception to the trend was the India-Pakistan match, which saw more than 70 coming on board as on-air associates and peak ad-rates amounting to Rs 25 lakh per 10 seconds of advertising time during the match.
The interest continued to rise beyond the first two matches and Star India got innovative with their marketing strategy. It rolled out four and five match packages for the potential advertisers, with options for language feeds.
The packages provided ad-spots for as high as Rs 15 lakh for matches up to the quarter final featuring India. Advertisers are now queuing up to buy some inventory on the quarter final match, most of which is already sold-out.
