Indian Premier League – a huge hit for ITV4
The Indian Premier League’s debut on free-to-air terrestrial television has been declared a monster hit, according to official figures released today.
ITV’s digital channel, ITV4 which is telecasting the much hyped tournament has witnessed a record surge in its viewership since it started on Friday.
According to overnight BARB figures, the channel’s peak viewing during the first three days were as follows:
Friday 12th March: 479,000
Saturday 13th March: 402,000
Sunday 14th March: 401,000
The numbers above exclude ITV4+1’s ratings and any recorded elements viewed later.
While the opening day saw just one match being played over four hours, ITV4 cleared its daytime schedule on both Saturday and Sunday from 09:30 onwards to bring viewers rolling coverage live from Mumbai. The channel is now hoping to remain seated on the goldmine until the tournament concludes on Sunday 25th April.
Last year’s UK broadcaster, Setanta Sports – a subscription channel, could only muster a viewership of around 50,000.
Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, was quick to comment on the success of the IPL in the UK. He expressed his excitement on the social networking site, Twitter; “UK figures for viewership on ITV already 10 times that of Setanta last year. Fantastic news.”
Modi also claimed to have beaten Sky Sports in the ratings during the same period. Sky Sports at the time had been telecasting the England tour of Bangladesh. He said, “ITV beats Sky Sports over the weekend in nos of viewers. This is great going.”
When someone told Lalit that comparing ratings of ITV and Setanta Sports/Sky Sports was unfair, he said the following; “Why should we do that? Viewership is viewership in the end. If ITV has higher viewership than Sky – that’s great for the game. He further added, “The ITV nos are double that of rugby league. This is huge by all imaginations.”
ITV4 holds the exclusive UK telecast rights of the tournament. Rumouredly, it beat off competition from the likes of STAR and Sony Entertainment Television Asia, who were also up for bidding for the UK rights.
At the time of filing this article, BizAsia.co.uk was awaiting a statement from ITV about the success of IPL 3 on UK television.
Meanwhile in India, the opening game of the third season garnered a rating of 6.95 TVR in the six metros, according to TAM data. Even though the number is huge, it failed to topple the ratings of day one of season one. Then the first match of the first edition got a rating of 8.2. However, there was some good news, IPL 3 fared better than the second edition in South Africa which had managed a rating of 5.6.
