MUMBAI: The VIVO IPL final on May 27 between between Chennai Super Kings and Sun Risers Hyderabad was watched by 160 million viewers across the Star TV network, the highest television reach recorded for any match in the history of the tournament.
The match recorded a viewership growth of 34% with 52.9 million average impressions on the network, it was announced on Thursday.
Star India had leveraged its entire network to make the final match at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium a success. Positioned as the “World’s Toughest Final” between Chennai Super Kings and Sun Risers Hyderabad, the game was Star’s biggest ever production with 11 live feeds in eight languages across 17 channels, including flagship Hindi general entertainment channel Star Plus and movie channel Star Gold. Apart from Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Kannada, the final was aired in two additional languages: Marathi and Malayalam.
Television reach for the summit clash, which was won by CSK, across the network (not including DD), recorded a 32% growth over last year’s figure of 121 million, data provided by the broadcaster shows. Across screens, the reach hit an historic high of 211 million.
Total audience reach for the whole tournament (across 60 matches) was 769 million viewers, with TV (live and surround) accounting for 567 million viewers,
Excluding the surround (non-live) TV telecast, however, the reach of the standalone live television telecast stood at 414 million viewers across the network, SportzPower is given to understand.
In terms of television viewership, the tournament this year (across 60 matches) garnered 1.4 billion impressions, 15% more than IPL 10, which garnered 1.2 billion impressions.
Regional feeds also witnessed growth during IPL 11. While Hindi contributed 54% of viewership, followed by English at 24%, regional stood at a solid 22%.
Meanwhile, the growth in digital reach numbers were even more impressive, with Star’s OTT platform Hotstar registering 202 million viewers, a 51% rise in reach for the tournament over last year’s 133 million.
ote:
1. Reach refers to the number of unique individuals who have seen the tournament for one minute at least
2. Impressions is the unit of measurement of viewership which refers to the number of people watching the tournament at any given point of time during its telecast
