City factor key for Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi being glued to IPL3

According to TAM data for all India market in CS4+ category, for the first 14 matches – from March 12 to March 20 – Mumbai emerged as the city that is most glued to IPL3 matches, particularly those days when Mumbai Indians are on the field. Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore are the other cities that watch IPL matches the most.

The latest IPL3 rankings show Mumbai Indians as the leading IPL team, followed by Royal Challengers Bangalore, Rajasthan Royals, Delhi Daredevils and Deccan Chargers in the top five. If one goes by the average TVR for each of these cities, then Mumbai scores the highest with a TVR of 6.21 per cent, followed by Kolkata and Bangalore with 5.62 per cent TVR. Hyderabad has received a TVR of 5.24 per cent, Delhi, 4.93 per cent, Rajasthan, 4.41 per cent, and Chennai, 4.27 per cent. The last in the bracket are Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh, which put together have an average TVR of 3.55 per cent.

The highest TVR received so far in the first 14 matches comes from Kolkata with 10.99 per cent, followed closely by Mumbai with 10.79 per cent. Mumbai Indians had played against Delhi Daredevils on March 17, which it won by 98 runs. Delhi, on the other hand, scored 6.83 per cent TVR during the same time. Similarly, Kolkata Knight Riders won against Royal Challengers Bangalore on March 14, and Royal Challengers Bangalore scored 5.16 per cent TVR during the same match.

Bangalore is another city that saw a huge viewership of 10.05 per cent when it played against Mumbai Indians on March 20, wherein Royal Challengers Bangalore won with over 7 wickets. Mumbai Indians during the same match witnessed 9.04 per cent TVR.

If one looks at the opening match, barring Chennai, most of the other cities enjoyed viewership of over 5 per cent. On March 12, the match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers, which was won by the former, Kolkata had a viewership of 9.30 per cent, while Hyderabad had a TVR of 8.25 per cent.

Thus, there certainly is a trend that shows that the city factor is building up and quite strongly, wherein the IPL team has a strong backing from its city and if that team plays well, the viewership from that city increases.

According to Dinesh Vyas, VP and Head, TME, Mumbai, “Team loyalty is certainly building up for IPL and will only continue. Besides this, any programme will lose its freshness season after season. However, it is upto the IPL management to make it as exciting as the last season. For advertisers, what only matters is the increase in viewership over the last year. IPL may lose its freshness over the years, but eventually it is all about injecting freshness season on season.”

R Venkata Subramanian, VP, Lintas Media Group, noted, “Team loyalty is certainly there and it will only grow stronger over the years. However, retaining viewership would be very difficult during IPL matches, so they will have to innovate and revamp year on year in order to attract more viewership and newer audience.”