BENGALURU: The tenth edition of the T20 Indian Premier League that ended on 21 May 2017 (IPL 10 or IPL 2017) garnered much better viewership than its predecessor – IPL 2016 according to Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) data. Fifty nine of the sixty matches – 55competition (56 planned) matches, two qualifiers, 1 eliminator and one final match, were played by 8 teams over 43 days (44 planned) across 47 days with over 200 Indian and international cricketers. One match – match number 29 between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Sun Risers Hyderabad on Tuesday, 24 April 2017 was not played because of incessant rain at the venue – The M. Chinnaswamy Stadium at Bangalore.

A larger proportion of rural viewers watched IPL 10 – 47 percent of total viewers as against 39 percent of total viewers in the case of IPL 9. The ratio of male to female viewers was almost unchanged as was the ratio of HSM markets to South markets. 41 percent of females made up the viewership of IPL10 as compared to 42 percent in IPL 9, and 73 percent of the total viewers were from the HSM market in IPL 10 as compared to 72 percent in the case of IPL 9.

Average viewership per match in IPL 2017 at 21.19 million impressions was 24 percent more than the average 17.11 million impressions that were recorded for IPL 9. On weekends, which included Saturday’s and Sunday’s along with two Mondays’ – (17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017 or May day) and two Friday’s –(14April 2017 and 28 April 2017) average Impressions for primetime matches or evening matches in IPL 10 increased 20.5 percent to 26.222 million as compared to 21.753 million for IPL 9. In all, 44 matches (43 played) were scheduled for evening primetime and 16 matches for afternoon during IPL 10’s extended weekends.

Afternoon matches saw viewership increase 26.54 percent in IPL 10 to an average of 12.713 million per afternoon match from an average of 10.046 million per afternoon match during IPL 9.

So which were the most watched teams of IPL 10?

For IPL 10, matches 1 to 56 were the competition matches – each team played 2 matches with each of the other seven contestants – the only exception being match number 29 mentioned above. Hence each team was supposed to play 14 competition matches. The last four matches of IPL 10 (technically it should be 3, with the fourth being the finals –match 60) have been considered as Knockouts matches in this report by the author.All the Knockouts matches were played only in the evening. Two (matches 57 and 59) of the 3 matches were qualifiers, with one eliminator match (match 58) and one final – match 60.

The qualifiers, the eliminator or Knockouts and the finals were sure to garner high viewership, and to bring the teams at par, only the matches before the Knockouts have been considered to determine which teams were the most watched team in IPL 10.

Data for the matches 1 to 56 (except the washout match 29) indicates average viewership of 23.764 million per evening or primetime match during IPL10 for 39 payed evening matches before the Knockouts.  Of the 56 planned matchesuntil the Knockouts, 16 were afternoon matches as mentioned above. Forty-two evening matches had higher ratings than the highest ratings garnered by an afternoon match.

Evening matches before the Knockouts

Four teams had average viewership per match that were higher than the overall average viewership per match for all evening matches until the Knockouts. Please refer to the figure below.

Team Mumbai or Mumbai Indians (MI) topped the list with 24.950 million average impressions per match, followed very closely behind by team Bangalore or Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) with 24.893 million average impressions per match. The two matches played by these two teams against each other were afternoon matches – one of which was the most viewed afternoon match.

Trailing not too far behind RCB was team Pune (Rising Pune Supergiant or RPS) with average match impressions of 24.672 million permatch. Team Kolkata or Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) was also close at fourth place with average 24.673 million impressions per match until the Knockouts in IPL 10. Also, trailing at fifth place was team Hyderabad or Sun Rises Hyderabad (SRH) with average impressions of 23.558 million per match. Team Punjab or Kings XI Punjab (KXIP), Team Gujarat (Gujarat Lions or GL) and Team Delhi (Delhi Daredevils or DD followed at sixth, seventh and eighth places respectively.

The average of the sum of average weekly impressions per match - 209.778 million divided by the eight weeks or part thereof that the IPL 10 matches were played, works out to 26.222 million impressions per match. However, a simple average based on the sum of all the 43 evening IPL matches (1,043.242 million) divided by the number of matches played (43) works out to 24.261 million impressions per evening match.

The most watched match of IPL 10 was the final with 39.403 million average impressions on Sunday, 21 May 2017. The most watched match of the season before the Knockouts was Match no 2 between Mumbai and Pune on Thursday, 6 April 2017 at Pune that had 30.328 million average impressions. It was an evening match, right at the commencement of IPL 10.

Afternoon matches

For the 16 afternoon matches, the simple average obtained by dividing the sum of impressions of all matches (206.733 million) by 16, works out to 12.921 million average impressions per match. Three teams scored higher viewership impressions for the afternoon sessions than the average viewership per match of all matches. Again, like in the case of evening matches, team Mumbai drew the most eyeballs with a simple average of 16.456 million impressions per match from 3 matches. The Bangalore team was next with an average of 14.228 million impressions per match from 4 afternoon matches. Team Gujarat was third with an average of 13.942 million impressions per match from 4 matches. Please refer to the figure below.

The highest rated afternoon match was Match no 12 between Bangalore and Mumbai on 14 April 2017 with 18.130 million impressions. Both teams were the most watched teams of IPL 10. The match was played on a day that was a holiday in most parts of the country.

End Points

Many factors could be responsible for higher viewership ratings – this could include viewer fascination for the team, more matches played by a team on a holiday/s or in the evening session/s as compared to the teams that attracted lower viewer eyeballs. Would evening matches between Mumbai and Bangalore have drawn more viewers? Both teams are composed of some of the most exciting cricketers in the world? Quite likely! It would only be a cliché to say that IPL has in general succeeded in all its seasons in affecting viewership during all of them.

It may be noted that the average impressions per match in the afternoon mentioned in the early part of this report is based on the average of average impressions of the weeks divided by the number of weeks –this was mentioned earlier as 12.713 million per afternoon match for IPL 10 and an average of 10.046 million per afternoon match during IPL 9. However to bring parity, in the chart above, and at the cost of repetition, the average impressions per match have been obtained by adding the impressions of all the afternoon matches divided by the number of afternoon matches.