MUMBAI: Research from Ampere Analysis has found that in two of the world’s largest markets, China and India, tentpole international sports events outperform domestic competitions.
In India, cricket dominates the sports rankings with 90% of fans showing an interest, followed by tennis and badminton.
Specific to cricket, it should come as no surprise that despite being the world cricket’s most valuable annual property, it is NOT the Indian Premier League that takes bragging rights for most followed event but the quadrennial ICC Cricket World Cup, with the biennial World Twenty20 coming in second, followed in third place by the IPL.
That in no way takes away from the fact that the IPL is one of the richest non-football leagues on the planet, with five-year domestic and global TV rights acquired by Star India for $2.4 billion for 2018-22.
IPL fans not only take more services from Star’s premium channel, Star Sports Select than the national average, but also over-index for other media content services including Netflix and Amazon.
The 12th edition of the IPL concluded on Sunday as Mumbai Indians won their fourth title by a one-run margin against Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings.
Hotstar, the official online broadcaster of the IPL, claimed 300 million viewers saw the matches on its platform. That number was before the Sunday’s final in Hyderabad.
Alexios Dimitropoulos, senior analyst at Ampere Analysis said: “Given their sheer scale, China and India are key markets for the world’s big sporting leagues who are looking to expand their reach and grow their overseas revenues – both in terms of media rights and merchandise sales. Many of the globe’s largest sports leagues have already targeted these countries, but there is certainly more consumer appetite for competitions, and a willingness to pay to watch them.
“In China the NBA and the EPL already boast two of the country’s largest TV rights contracts, and that’s why both competitions tour China and play league and friendly matches locally. However, with such strongly preferred sports in each market, international leagues entering these two markets for the first time outside of the traditional favourites will need to work hard to develop a following.”
A cautionary note here. Outside of cricket, SportzPower remains sceptical of the findings of the report till such time as there is more clarity on the sample size as well as the demographics of the survey respondents.
