The Great Indian Cricket Tamasha

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Saturday , February 23, 2008 at 2259 hrs unadulterated fun,” says 40-year-old Abhijit Chakraborty, a cricket fanatic based in Kolkata. “I can now watch the matches without worrying whether India will win or lose.”

It is precisely on this audience that IPL will depend for much of its franchise. “It is a male K-serial equivalent,” says Atul Phadnis, CEO and chief evangelist, Media e2e. “It has all the ingredients of a TV soap—drama, pace, unpredictability.” And of course, the sex appeal “with the dancing girls and the rock stars of cricket out there in the middle,” he adds.

Of course, there will be no dearth of star appeal. The top 80 players in the ICC rankings will be playing in IPL, according to BCCI officials. This may also help pull the women viewers, who have not been the traditional strongholds for sports programming/ channels.

In a way, the total IPL package is custom made with an eye on prime-time family viewing. The fact that the players will be seated out in the open—and not in the traditional dressing room—makes for great “piece to camera”, with every prayer, every nudge and every wink between players open for public scrutiny and debate, much like the way one debates Tulsi’s sarees and Parvati’s bindis now. “This might, in fact, force many programming heads at general entertainment channels to rethink their prime-time line-up really really seriously,” adds Phadnis.

Amid all the hoopla, there are some voices of doubt. Analysts say the viewership pattern between weekdays and weekends are bound to be different to begin with. Then there will be a lot of appointment viewing. One will probably return home early on certain days to catch certain matches. “Just imagine a 40-day movie festival on a channel,” says Atulit Saxena, senior vice-president, Future Brands. “Will you watch every one of them every day, back to back?” The first seven-10 days will have great interest, he says. Then he sees the viewership and interest levels dipping a bit. “Viewers know they are not missing out on some lifetime opportunity,” he says. “However, the numbers will pick up post the quarter-finals or so.”