The saga of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is getting curious and curious. Even as the deadline for buying tender documents for media rights for its next five seasons is approaching, TV viewership shows no sign of improvement. At last count, its viewership was still 24% lower than last year’s IPL season.
Last week, this column argued that IPL fatigue could be a reason for the decline, given that viewers have watched four IPLs in 18 months as last year’s game was held in two phases.
The second argument was that the IPL being a celebrity-led game, with the top four-five star cricketers misfiring, there could be less interest in the matches. Then of course, the chatter of increasing mobility and reopening offices has robbed TV of its viewers. “The reasons for the decline in IPL viewership are varied and often conflicting. But one of the reasons could be a problem with the BARC data as it resets the sample houses,” said a broadcast network executive familiar with the developments. The Broadcast Audience Research Council or BARC India measures TV viewership.
In previous years, a section of 80 lakh people were classified as heavy IPL spectators. These people used to spend 1,200 minutes or more in a season of IPL. But this year that number has either dwindled or disappeared. “There are still 2.7 million viewers out of 8 million, but they are no longer a huge audience. That clause, you could argue, establishes that IPL viewership has declined. However, the remaining 5.3 million have fallen off the map and no longer exist. You could argue that resetting the panel has a function,” said the person, adding that this may not be the only definite reason behind the decline.
However, nearly 10 million pay TV homes have cut their cable or direct-to-home (DTH) connections in the past two years. In metros, people can cord-cutting to join the streaming platform, while in semi-urban and rural areas, viewers are switching to Doordarshan’s free-to-air DTH platform Free Dish.
Obviously, if the BARC data is putting pressure on viewership, its impact will not be limited to the IPL. To be sure, several TV channel executives, Mint privately admitted that there have been sudden and unexplained changes in the viewership data. Many pay TV channels – both news and entertainment in Hindi and regional languages - have recorded low viewership.
Apart from other reality TV shows, sure shot winners like Naagin on Colors have seen their ratings drop. Hindi and regional news channels have also seen their audiences thin. “The channel owners are nervous and at their wit’s end trying to figure out what is wrong. They are taking questions with BARC though there is no clear answer yet,” said a spokesperson of a broadcasting network. said the executive. “It looks like the whole ecosystem has been disrupted,” added another.
BARC itself is grappling with this issue. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a BARC executive explained that the panel houses have not been reset. BARC has meters in 40,000 homes and an estimated 4.5 to 5 people per household, it monitors the audience habits of 230,000 people. But to reach 200,000+ viewership to 1 billion people, it conducts a baseline survey every two years with a sample size of 300,000 to 400,000 people. It studies the behaviour, profile and demographics of their audience and is used to project panel houses.
But due to the pandemic, the baseline survey has not been done for the last four years. “So, BARC took the Readership Survey of India 2019 and extrapolated on that basis. This change in viewership is probably due to the discrepancy between the pay TV vs free TV home ratio. Free TV homes may artificially increase,” the executive cautioned, adding that this was also a hypothesis. “Once the new baseline study is completed in September-October, we will know what happened to viewers “
Meanwhile, the argument that IPL viewership has gone online on Disney+ Hotstar was also debunked by a person who said that the online viewership is also less this year. The jury is still out on whether the BARC numbers are out of whack, interest in cricket is waning, or the total time spent on all screens has dropped!
Shuchi Bansal is the Media, Marketing and Advertising Editor of Mint. The simple post will look at pre-assing issues related to all three. Or just fun stuff.