For all the hype around the country’s first big league of domestic cricket, Essel Group’s Indian Cricket League (ICL), it’s the ongoing India-Pakistan Test series that remains the big draw among television viewers.
A like-to-like comparison of TAM Peoplemeter’s TV ratings of the simultaneously-on ICL matches and the second India-Pakistan Test shows that the number of people watching India-Pakistan was about five times higher than those watching ICL on the opening day of the league. And the gap only widened on Day Two.
Zee officials, however, insisted that the ICL ratings are “remarkable”. Said Essel group executive V-P Ashish Kaul, “Of course, we can’t compare with an India-Pakistan match that’s the Sholay of cricket, but still our ratings are very encouraging. The ICL ratings are the highest ever for any domestic cricket ever played in the country. In the past, domestic cricket viewing has scored almost zero TRPs. We expect our ratings to triple towards the end of the tournament.”
As per data released by TAM Peoplemeter System, among the target group of four-years-plus viewers across all-India cable and satellite households, the first two days of the ICL tournament saw Zee Sports deliver a TRP of well under 1.
The first ICL match played on November 30, for example, delivered a rating of 0.32. In comparison, on the same day, the same target group delivered a rating of 1.81 on DD1 for the India-Pakistan Test match, that’s about five-and-half times more than what ICL’s opening match posted on Zee Sports. Neo Sports, set back by low connectivity, generated an average TRP of 0.87 two-and-half times more than that of ICL that day.
Essel Group’s Mr Kaul said the ICL has done well when compared to domestic cricket viewership. “What the ICL has done is narrowed the gap between international and domestic cricket viewing audiences,” he said. Citing examples of domestic tournaments such as Challenger Cup and Ranji Super League which, Mr Kaul said, typically average ratings at least 30-40% lower than ICL.
On December 1, which was the second day of the India-Pakistan Test, DD1 posted a TRP of 2.04, with Neo Sports putting up 0.94 on the board. In stark contrast, the two ICL matches played on the same day posted ratings as low as 0.09 and 0.22 on Zee Sports.
Having connectivity of only about half that of overall cable & household households, Zee Sports is also not available on direct-to-home (DTH) platform Tata Sky which has a subscriber base of about 1.5 million.
Essel Group’s decision to telecast the first 30 minutes of the matches across the Zee bouquet too doesn’t seem to have done resulted in higher ratings. On both days, TRPs on Zee channels such as Zee Business, Zee Café, Zee News, Zee Music and regional Zee channels were negligible.
Zee Business and Zee Café delivered zero ratings on the second day of the tournament. ICL matches on flagship channel Zee TV, on both the first two days, also posted ratings of under 1.
Meanwhile, Zee group said that having sold ICL’s international broadcast rights to three global distributors, Astro PPV, Derana and Gateway, ICL’s showing would only get better. “Zee Sports connectivity has improved significantly over the past one month,” Mr Kaul said.
Source : http://www.aboutindiancricketleague.com/
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