The general election may have won the battle, but it looks like the Indian Premier League (IPL) will win the war—for eyeballs.Viewership studies by two media buying firms say the Twenty20 cricket league that begins on 18 April, will attract more viewers than the election coverage.
The general election begins on 16 April and will be conducted in five phases till 13 May. The counting of votes will happen on 16 May, the day when election coverage peaks on news channels.
The final of IPL is to be played on 24 May in Johannesburg.
The government’s fear that it would not be able to provide security for both the elections and IPL forced the tournament to move to South Africa. If an IPL match and election coverage happens at the same time, approximately 60% of the viewers will prefer to watch cricket, says a dipstick study of 120 people done across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore by Maxus, a media buying agency that is part of GroupM India Pvt. Ltd.
A similar study by Mediaedge:cia Worldwide Ltd (MEC), another media buying agency from the GroupM stable, which surveyed 1,500 viewers across 10 cities—Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Jaipur—also found that viewers are likely to vote for IPL matches over election coverage.
“The average TRP (television rating point, a measure of viewership) a news channel would bring in during elections a range between 0.6 and 0.7,” says Anisha Motwani, chief marketing officer, Max New York Life Insurance Co. Ltd. “…IPL delivered TRPs of 6-7 on an average (last year).”
Max New York pulled out as an associate sponsor of IPL this year, but has bought significant number of television spots during the coverage of the matches out of fear of losing out on an opportunity to reach out to consumers.
History shows that IPL does draw more viewers than elections.
Estimates by media agencies suggest that in 2008, IPL, over a course of 44 days generated around 300 gross rating points (GRPs)—another measure of viewership, this is the aggregate of TRPs over a period of time—whereas the daily GRPs garnered by 25 news channels that covered the results of the Lok Sabha elections in 2004 were around 93.
To be sure, comparing viewership generated over 44 days with viewership garnered over a day may not seem fair, but media buyers argue that IPL was telecast for only 3 hours and there was only one channel telecasting it, whereas in the case of elections, there were 25 channels involved, and they covered the declaration of results around the clock.
Source – livemint.com