IPL viewership grows on digital

Hyderabad and Bengaluru contributed the most in the online viewership numbers on Times Internet and YouTube.

As per the official digital partner for the Indian Premier League, Times Internet's page views have increased by 52 per cent, as compared to last year. The tournament is streamed live on Boxtv and YouTube's Indiatimes channel. The page views have increased from 49.3 million in 2012 to 75.2 million in the current season. The viewership numbers are recorded for 38 matches, which is exactly half of the tournament.

Interestingly, this year the highest viewership was recorded from Hyderabad and Bengaluru, which contributed to about 14 per cent each (10.52 million), while Delhi stands second with 10 per cent of the total page views (7.52 million).

Last year, however, the viewing patterns were different, since New Delhi and Bengaluru led the viewership with 14 per cent each in 2012, with Mumbai coming in a close second at 13 per cent.

Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet, says, "Over the last two years, we've offered IPL fans across the world a superior experience online and steadily grown a loyal viewer base. For IPL 2013, we've worked hard to make the online experience more social and interactive."

In addition to this, the combined viewership of users watching highlights and clips saw a whopping 480 per cent growth in watch hours over 2012. The match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Pune Warriors India played on April, 23 and the one played between Mumbai Indians and RCB on April, 25 were the most viewed matches online.

Praveen Sharma, head of media sales, Google India, says, "Better streaming experience, increased mobile and tablet device access and growing awareness about the availability of IPL online is fuelling the growth in viewership. In the past, we usually saw a rise in the first two weeks of the tournament and then it picked up again during the final week. But this year, the growth has been consistent through the tournament. At this rate, we hope to register strong growth in total viewership by the end of the tournament over last year."