BENGALURU: Mobile handsets and mobile services, including data services ruled the air on the channels that broadcast the tenth season of the cricket T20 Indian Premier League (IPL 10 or IPL 2017) according to Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) for the weeks during which live IPL 10 matches were aired. The number of insertions by the top 10 advertisers and brands during IPL10 were 22.9 percent and 10.4 percent more respectively than the spots booked by the top10 advertisers and brands during IPL 9.
The excitement built up for the event saw IPL 10 recording the highest viewership for the season in week 15 till date for all the Sony Pictures Network (SPN) channels that broadcast the event – the two Hindi Movie channels – Sony Max and two Sports channel’s Sony Six.(English) and Sony ESPN (commentary in Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Hindi).These channels have been collectively termed as IPL10 channels in this paper.
IPL 10 commenced on Wednesday, 5 April 2017. The mega T20 cricket bonanza played by 8 teams comprising of over 200 players including 72 international players concluded with the finals on Sunday, 21 May 2017, after 60 matches (59 played, one washed out) spread over 47 days.
BARC week 14 commenced on Saturday, 1 April 2017 and ended on Friday, 7 April 2017. Three days of play with three matches played happened in week 14. The event concluded in the beginning of week 21 – only one match –the final, was played during that week. Ten matches were played during each of BARC weeks15, 16 and 18. Nine matches were played in weeks 17 and 19 and seven planned for week 20, with just one in week 21 as mentioned above.
A total of 21,964 insertions were made by the top 10 advertisers during IPL 10 on the channels that aired the event. Last year the top advertisers had 17,870 spots on these channels.55.6 percent (12,223 insertions) of these spots were booked by two Mobile phone suppliers and two mobile services each – Oppo India (Oppo) was the largest advertiser on the SPN channels during IPL10 with 4,285 insertions followed by Vivo Mobile India Pvt Ltd with3,767 insertions. Mobile and data services provider Reliance Jio Infocomm was the third biggest advertiser during IPL 10 on IPL channels with 2,504 insertions. Vodafone Essar Limited was ranked the seventh biggest advertiser with 1,667 insertions. Please refer to the table below for the 10 largest advertisers on IPL broadcasting channels during IPL 10 weeks.
Oppo split the insertions mainly with two variants of it mobile phone model – Oppo F3 plus, which was the most advertised brand during IPL 10 on the channels that aired IPL 10 with 2,909 insertions and ads that combined both Oppo F3 and F3 plus with 1,376 insertions. The second most advertised brand during IPL 10 on IPL channels was Jio Digital Life with 2,317 insertions. Like Oppo, Vivo split its spots with both variants of it mobile phone – the Vivo V5 and the Vivo V5 plus.Another mobile brand from Micromax – the Micromax Canvas 6 series was the eighth most advertised brand during IPL 10 on IPL channels with 916 insertions. Please refer to the table below for the most advertised brands during IPL 10 and IPL 9.
