Mumbai : The Indian Premier League is growing in both popularity and television viewership as reflected by the ratings of the first four weeks as data released by TAM Media Research show IPL 8 ratings are up 25% from the seventh edition.
As of its fourth week, season eight of IPL, which has seen fans fill up big stadiums, has hooked viewers with some really close matches. TAM data show that IPL 8 ratings has so far touched an average of 3.8 TVR versus 3.1 last year. This was among the target group of CS4+, which refers to viewers above the age of four. The 34 matches of IPL8 that TAM has reviewed so far have been sampled by 172 million unique viewers versus 169 million for the 34 matches of IPL 7.
The time spent by viewers per match has so far been 45 minutes and 54 seconds compared with last year’s 41 minutes and 39 seconds, recording 10% growth. The growth in ratings and time spent on matches comes at a time when the game has been riddled with controversies as well as a wider downtrend in viewership for cricket. “What can I say, except that IPL continues to do well and grow,” said Rohit Gupta, president, MSM, the official broadcaster.
The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), the joint body set up by the industry and followed by Sony and other broadcasters, shows week 16 and 17 ratings at an average of 6.0 TVR. This is in households with a target group of CS4+ all-India (household data). Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) versus Mumbai and Kolkata versus Chennai scored the highest with a cumulative 8.3 TVR across the Sony network, according to BARC data.
The cumulative reach of the IPL has risen from about 100 million in its first edition in 2008 to 160 million in IPL4 to 191.4 million last year. Last year’s rating rose 7% from 3.2 in 2013 to 3.6.
