IPL still a sought-after TV property?

Has the IPL hit rocky waters in terms of advertisers? While the overall television viewership ratings have dipped for the IPL, the league continues to be a highly sought-after property on TV, the Financial Express' Payal Khandelwal finds.

Marketers who have pulled out of the league this year think that the current viewership numbers do not justify the ad rates that SET Max is offering. “We backed out this year primarily because of the dip in popularity of IPL and we expected that dip to continue further and it is. Even the absolute reach has gone down,” says Mayank Shah, group product manager, Parle Products. “I think that IPL is a good property with a good amount of viewership but the price is not right. They have to rationalize the price and charge a fair amount. If they were offering the right price based on the viewership they are getting, we would have been on-board. They should have cut down the rates by 30%. There is also fatigue associated with cricket now and the performance in international cricket hasn’t been good either. Also, you need to keep innovating a property like IPL and IPL is not doing that.”