MUMBAI: Vivo Pro Kabaddi, an initiative by Mashal Sports and Star India, has touched great heights in terms of viewership. The sport that has an involvement of teams from India has managed to far surpass cricket – both of the international and local variety, in terms of viewership.
Star India’s newly launched and the only FTA sports channel in India- Star Sports First has been ruling Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) weekly top 5 Sports channels lists (All India (U+R) : NCCS All : 2+ Individuals) right from the first week that it was launched – week 30 of 2017 (Saturday, 22 July 207 to Friday, 28 July 2017. The channel was officially launched on 21 July 2017. It stood first in BARC’s weekly list of top 5 Sports channels in week 30 with 148.506 million impressions. Further, in its very first week, the first Pro Kabbadi League (PKL) match between the Hyderabad and Chennai teams on 28 July 2017 garnered it third place in Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) list of top 5 Sports programmes with 4.464 million impressions.
Over all, with only 23 matches being played till 11 August 2017, PKL has garnered 328 million Impressions across all eight channels it is being aired. Compare this with the Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL) – across 24 matches the local cricket league could garner a modest total of 9.16 million impressions for the three channels it was broadcast on – Star Sports 1, Star Sports 1 HD and Star Sports Tamil. Or compare the numbers garnered by the first and the second Test cricket matches between India and Sri Lanka – the first test match that was pared to just 4 days (26 July to 29 July) because of team India’s superlative performance scored a total of 1.86 million impressions for the three channels it was aired on – Sony Six (SD + HD) and Sony Ten 3. Test 2 ratings were a tad better – 1.86 million impressions during the four days it was broadcast on.
According to BARC data, over four weeks (weeks 29 to 32) viewership share of Sports Networks on the basis of impressions was Star Sports Network 63 percent, Sony 35 percent and others 2 percent. BARC data for the top 5 channels in the Sports genre for four weeks (29 to 32) indicates that Star Sports was the most watched Sports channel with 563.555 million impressions that it garnered over 3 weeks since its inceptions. Its network peer – Star Sports 1 Hindi was the second most watched channel with combined 419.219 million impressions over 4 weeks, followed by Sony Ten 1 with 357.229 million impressions also over 4 weeks at third place. Star Sports 2 with 276.826 million impressions over 4 weeks was at fourth place followed by Sony Six with 218.41 million impressions also over four weeks.
It was only the final game of the Women’s World Cup Cricket Final match between India and England on 23 July 2017 that managed to draw a large viewership vis-à-vis PKL during the start of the four week period under consideration – the event had 5.922 million impressions on Star Sports 1 Hindi and 5.31 million impressions on Star Sports 2, or a total of 11.232 million impressions across the two channels.
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