CHENNAI: Baseline Ventures, the organisers of the RuPay Pro Volleyball League (PVL), have announced that in the first week itself, the tournament was sampled by over 14.3 million viewers on Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) and their digital platform SonyLIV got close to 1 million viewers watching the matches.
The league began on 2 February in Kochi and will move to Chennai for the second leg starting on February 16.
“The impressive viewership numbers are validation of our efforts for a sport like volleyball which is so spectator-friendly. The on-ground response we got in Kochi was also very heartening. The early signs are encouraging and will push us to work harder,” PVL CEO Joy Bhattacharjya said.
The first seven matches clocked an average reach of 2.9 million. SPN is the official broadcast partner of the league.
SPN head of sports business and CRO Rajesh Kaul added: “The response from the inaugural RuPay Pro Volleyball League is in line with our expectations. Audience engagement has been very high both on-screen and on-ground as well, with over 14 million viewers across India tuning in to Sony Six and Sony Ten 3 channels to watch PVL so far. While the sport has always had a strong following in the South, it is exciting to see markets like Assam. West Bengal, Gujarat and Haryana also showing great interest. This is a clear indication of the widening interest amongst audiences for multi-sports, which has been a key focus area for us to build the sporting environment in the country.”
The game that garnered the highest rating was when Calicut Heroes played U Mumba Volley on 5 February with 328,000 impressions (number of viewers at any given point of time during the match). On the other hand, per match impressions were at 237,000 and average time spent per viewer per match stood at 11 minutes.
Even the volleyball fantasy game built by MyTeam11 has seen a consistent rise in daily users leading the company to double to prize pool from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 100,000. From the initial days of the league with 15 thousand gaming participants, the platform has now touched over 49 thousand fans.
