It's a record: Indo-Sri Lanka World Cup match peaks at 35.91 TVR

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 finals, that took place between India and Sri Lanka on April 2, has surely had a visible impact on the overall Indian television viewership.

According to TAM (C&S, 4+, All India), the final match garnered a peak TVR of 35.91, wherein in any given minute, 12 crore people were watching the game. Its average TVR stood at 23.2.

A total of 13.54 crore Indians tuned in to watch the India - Sri-Lanka finals. Around 1.5 crore viewers with terrestrial connections, 12 crore viewers with cable and satellite connections, and 1.8 crore viewers with digital (set top box) connections watched the match.

For the record, in 2007, the World Cup finals between Australia and Sri Lanka had scored an average TVR of just 4.53 TVR, evidently suggesting that with India not being in the finals, Indians were not interested in watching the tournament end. About 3.35 crore viewers had watched the match.

However, the 2011 World Cup finals performed only marginally better than the India-Pakistan semi-final tourney that took place on March 30. The latter scored a peak rating of 34.46 TVR, while its average rating was 20.98 TVR.

Says a top media observer, "The Indo-Pak match took place on a working day. And though, many offices declared a half-day on that day, most could wrap up their work only by 5 pm. A few offices chose to continue working. So, much of the match was watched out of home and not at home. These viewers were not traced by TAM, but had they been, the Indo-Pak series would have surely come out a winner."

Meanwhile, various media experts also state that the Indo-Pak semi finals and the Indo-Sri Lanka finals helped the sports genre to add approximately 300-plus GRPs for the week ended April 2, while the same coverage helped the Hindi news genre grow by about 50 GRPs.

Says Navin Khemka, senior vice-president, ZenithOptimedia, "Almost all news channels were trying to cash in on the euphoria created by the World Cup and after the Indo-Pak series win by India, news channels were cashing in on the hype created by the event even more."

Interestingly, the top three states in terms of response to the semi-final and final matches were Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. As a result, quite clearly, the genres that were impacted the most by the World Cup and lost viewership were Hindi GECs, Marathi GECs, Hindi movie channels and Bengali GECs.