ICL scores near duck on debut

[Prudent]

Even with cricket stars like Brian Lara, Chris Cairns and Inzamam-Ul-Haq on their side, the poor cable home penetration of the Zee Sports channel translated into poor viewership and advertising for the India Cricket League (ICL), the Essel group-promoted rebel Twenty20 cricket championship that begun on November 30. The first three Twenty20 matches played on November 30 and December 1 generated peak ratings of only 0.5 on Zee Sports despite aggressive promotions and appearances by film personalities.According to the online ratings of the first three ICL matches released by aMap, a Mumbai-based television ratings agency, even the combined ratings of all the 25-odd Zee channels for the first hour of the ICL tournament failed to attract significant viewers interest with the average time spent on the channels at eight minutes.The maximum combined ratings for the first 30 minutes of the third match played on Saturday between Mumbai Champs and Hyderabad Heroes was 1.0. But this was because of the match available across all the 28 Zee network channels. The standalone rating on Zee Sports for this match was 0.2, the aMap report said. Even the market share captured by Zee Sports was about one per cent of the total cable homes, the aMap report added.Zee Sports is currently available in not more than 10 million cable homes out of roughly 76 million cable households in the country. It is also absent on Tata Sky, the second-largest direct-to-home (DTH) company reaching around 1.5 million subscribers. These ratings are the worst in recent times for any important cricket tournament held in this year involving Indian cricketers.The India-Bangladesh series, after the World Cup debacle earlier this year, generated ratings of 0.5-0.7 in a number of matches on Neo Sports. But due to improved distribution, the current India-Pakistan test match series received an average ratings of over 2.4, sources said. So as expected...this is going to be another flop show by Subhash Chandra http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=306200&leftnm=8&subLeft=0&chkFlg=

[Tapioca]

Getting one-fifth of the viewers of the Indo-Pak series sounds pretty good for what is practically a domestic tournament.

[Chandan]

I have liked the matches so far and once when the match at Kolkata had become extremely boring yesterday, I prefered to watch ICL. I'm sure that in the second edition they'll come up with better ground and better pitch to offer even better cricket matches!

[King]

It was bound to happen. You don't expect people to follow local teams where India and Pakistan are playing a bilateral series. Nothing comes in the way of Ind v Pak clash.

[talksport]

Better than World Cup first round matches.... As somebody pointed out its great for Domestic players....I hope it will be a success

[beetle]

>>>>>>I have liked the matches so far and once when the match at Kolkata had become extremely boring yesterday, I prefered to watch ICL. :two_thumbs_up: That is some approval comming from chandan. Even I liked it . The lighting got better after the first day..... I was amazed by the level of fielding by the chandigarh lions....amazing considering they were playing on such a crappy ground. I am sure if it was not indo-pak season...the viewer ship would have been much higher.... I give it a 6/10....

[THX_1138]

they need better camera work... and some silly over the top and absolutely unneccessary graphics to jazz it up like the NBA or the NFL...

[beetle]

they need better camera work... and some silly over the top and absolutely unneccessary graphics to jazz it up like the NBA or the NFL...

And some boom boom every time they hit a six and four followedby a short laser show in the sky....that would be nice and interesting.:eyedance:

[Prudent]

they need better camera work... and some silly over the top and absolutely unneccessary graphics to jazz it up like the NBA or the NFL...

What about the crowds?

[zubinpepsi]

I find the commentary very boring... they seem to b more interested in hyping the players n ICL ..

[Tapioca]

What about the crowds?

Crowds are irrelevant. It is targetted towards the tv audience and that is all that matters. I have no idea what the crowd is but nobody expects big crowds when it is hosted in a place like Panchkula.

[The Outsider]

Actually, crowds aren't that bad. Certainly better than the crowds that turn up for domestic matches.

[Chandan]

I find the commentary very boring... they seem to b more interested in hyping the players n ICL ..

It is certainly much better than the DD commentary which I have to put up with for india-Pak matches.

[kumble_rocks]

It is certainly much better than the DD commentary which I have to put up with for india-Pak matches.

Don't you get neo sports ?

[beetle]

It is certainly much better than the DD commentary which I have to put up with for india-Pak matches.

humara bhi yahi haal hai......:D

[MundaPakistani]

Not very entertaining TBH. I got bored in 10-15 mins but will give it another try tomorrow.

[arkay]

The commentary team is very good. But they are not familiar with the domestic players. Compared to the likes of Arun Lal & Rameez, the quality of commentary team was good. I think we are being harsh on them for their first attempt. Despite many roadblocks from BCCI, they have done a commendable job. The cricket ground is still not international class. But they have opportunities to improve on that. I saw couple of matches where there was decent crowd despite a India Pakistan match being played live. There will be a lot of articles which will come out in next few days which will try to undermine ICL. Let us see how they move from here.

[MundaPakistani]

What was the point of having these matches when an IND PAK series is on? Were they trying to send a message that ICL can do well even when there is another big series going on in the country?