Successful Indian Premier League 2020 underlines that competition remains king
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Cricket’s Indian Premier League ended with the Mumbai Indians beating the Delhi Capitals in a rather one-sided and lacklustre final last month.
Yet while the showpiece event failed to deliver, it couldn’t take the gloss off a remarkably successful tournament in the UAE.
Uday Shankar, president of Disney Asia Pacific, which owns broadcaster Star Sports, called it “probably the most successful IPL tournament ever” and viewing figures back that up.
Global viewership rose 24 per cent from 2019, while a record 200m tuned in to the season opener in September.
In India, minutes viewed were up 30 per cent on last year. In the UK, Sky Sports averaged 250,000 viewers per game.
What made it so compelling? A daily dose of highly competitive matches, involving many of the world’s greatest players, where every result mattered.
For football fans, this was an unfamiliar feeling. In Europe at least, the trend is towards a sport increasingly bereft of competitive drama.
Serie A and the Bundesliga have been won by the same teams for eight consecutive seasons. Paris Saint-Germain have won Ligue 1 in seven of the last eight years. In Spain, two teams are responsible for 85 per cent of La Liga titles this century.
Elite football, while high on skill, is often too predictable.
By contrast, the IPL felt full of surprises. That seven of the eight teams could still qualify going into the final round signifies a tournament high on jeopardy and quality.
Five matches needed a super over, including three in a row on Sunday 18 October. No wonder we kept tuning in.
All of which is a roundabout way of drawing out the IPL’s vital lesson: competitiveness remains fundamental to sport’s appeal as appointment-to-view entertainment.
Why IPL is a highly watchable product
The IPL is the 14th most valuable sports league by media rights, commanding £500m annually in broadcast fees. It’s a price that will only rise if viewing figures continue to too.
That may be dwarfed by major global leagues in other sports, but it is interesting that the two richest – the NFL ($4.5bn per year) and the NBA ($2.6bn per year) – share the same structural framework as the IPL.
Drafts, salary caps and a closed, no-relegation format, ensures the leagues remain reliably competitive, with each culminating in a climactic play-off series.
All that contributes to the viewer believing most franchises have a genuine chance of winning and gives them a reason to keep watching.
No doubt there are other factors at play – not least a favourable mass domestic market to cater towards – but the numbers suggest that it is a model which appeals to TV audiences.
In an age where emphasis is increasingly on bolstering broadcast revenues, creating a highly watchable product is fundamental.
Admittedly, many major leagues in other sports do not have the luxury of imposing restrictive measures to aid the competitiveness of the IPL, NFL and NBA.
Yet, as they toy with new leagues and formats, why not heed the IPL’s lesson and experiment with consolidating its elite clubs and greatest assets into a more concentrated, hotly contested and compelling tournament?
It is hard to imagine that such an approach, in spite of the inevitable early resistance, would fail to pique the interest of sports fans across the globe.
Harry Eckersley is a senior marketing executive at CSM Sport & Entertainment.