Do we buy into the cricket world cup or not is an important question. To address this Team Initiative Media has done a comprehensive analysis of recent trends.

The analysis looks at recent trends and match schedules and attempts to offer a point of view.

All Analysis has been done on SEC AB, All Adults, 25 yrs+ in the top 8 cities.

Reading Between Lines & Overs Of The Recent ICC Tournament.
The reason to buy into is stronger given our team's performance in the recent past, be it in the Nat-West series in England or the ICC trophy in Sri Lanka, where our team did put up a brilliant show. But buying-in needs to be based on the viewing patterns that this performance is throwing up. In search for the answer, it would be a good starting point to look at the telecast performance of the recently concluded ICC tournament in Sri Lanka.

The tournament was aired both on Set Max (Satellite rights) & DD 1 (Terrestrial rights). 6 matches in the preliminary rounds were day matches and 6 were played under lights. The 2 semi-finals & the Finals (2) were also played under lights. All the matches featuring India were played under lights - interesting also to see if the day-night matches have affected viewing patterns during the prime-time fare of 1900 to 2300 hrs.

The scale of viewing:
Undoubtedly the abandoned finals of the tournament had the highest rating both in DD 1 & Max. The finals clocked 18 TVR's on DD among non-C&S homes and 17 TVR's on Max among C&S homes. Which is the highest rating for a Cricket match featuring India in the recent times, even higher than the famous victory against the English Team chasing 325 in the Nat-west series finals. These ratings compare favourably with the top rated programs on both the C&S and non-C&S audiences.

More than obvious, the matches featuring India had a higher rating than other matches. But the difference is quite alarming...

A comparative picture of the TVR's in DD & Max is given below…

		Finals	India matches		Others
Audience	Channel	D/N	D/N	DAY	D/N	DAY
Non C&S	DD1	13 - 18	14 - 16	--	11	--
C&S	Set Max	15 - 17	9 - 17	--	2 - 7	1 - 3

Highlight: Only 30% of the matches in the ICC tournament got considerably good ratings, and these are essentially the India Matches.

Did less-serious followers of cricket get lured in?
Set Max changed their programming content beyond the live telecasts - a move that was planned to get in less-serious viewers especially women, interested in the game and the telecast. Changes included getting in an ex-music channel VJ Ruby Bhatia as one of the co-host, along with Charu Sharma.

The TVR's do reveal that more women watched the ICC tournament on Set Max compared to the Nat-West series on ESS. But with the majority of the household still owning a single TV, it could be an outcome of the higher interest in the ICC tournament amongst the core cricket viewer. The programming beyond live cricket garnered a fraction of the TVRs of the live telecast for the tournament, with its ratings averaging 1 TVR.

How does cricket watching affect other channels?
The total time watching TV increases during a major tournament like the ICC fixtures. Analysis reveals that the increase is as high as 47%. But, even during the ICC tournament, cricket telecast grabbed just 18% of the total time spent watching TV during the period. The following chart throws more light on this factor...

The flux during the telecast:
Assuming that a cricket match lasts for about 6 hours, amazing as it is, on an average only 20% of the match is watched, even if India features in the match. The flux is a function of the match situation, the telecast timing and the fare on other channels.

For example if we were to look at the minute by minute viewing of India Vs England match played on Sunday the 22nd Sept. Cricket completely dominates TV viewing. TVR's on other channels do not even figure anywhere near TVR's of cricket.

But the scene changes when it comes to the India vs South Africa match on a weekday. When compared to the TVR trend of match played between India Vs England on Sunday, audiences are seen to make time to watch their favourite soap on Star Plus. Thus, we see a trend where in TVR's on these soaps do not lose out even during as important a match as the Semi-finals even though it featured India in it.

Advertisers on Cricket need to be wary of the flux factor as the ad-spot could be scheduled anywhere in the match and tournament. It is important hence, to quantify the high flux of TVR's within the cricket match, as compared to the flux of TVR's in an Half an hour Serial.

Note that in the following analysis, the coefficient of variance is a measure of the flux within the viewing period, and cricket lags way behind on this measure.

Match	Avg TVR	TVR Range	Co-eff Var
Ind - Zim	9	4 - 17	7
Ind - Eng	17	9 - 22	22
Ind - SA	12	7 - 23	17
Aus - SL	7	2 - 10	15
Kyunki...	17	12 -19	3
Kahaani...	13	10 - 16	2
Kaahin...	9	8 - 15	2

Noise levels during the ICC Tournament :
One obvious way that advertisers tackle flux is to be across the tournament with as high a frequency, but that costs a lot now, with rates going up during the ICC telecasts and India-specific tournaments. Despite this, in all about 44 brands advertised in DD & about 47 on Set Max during the ICC tournament. Although DD telecast just a third of the matches, it oversold its telecast averaging 7300-sec per match as against 3700 sec per match, on live cricket on Max.

All the advertisers had an even spread of spots across matches, as they were not allowed to buy specific matches. The top spenders are clocking, on an average about 5 to 7 spots per match on Max and as high as 8 to 11 spots per match on DD. This scheduling frequency could be used as benchmark in the context of breaking clutter during the cricket telecast.

To recap…

1. It is very clear that audience will watch a good match no matter which channel it is aired in, be it DD or Set Max.
2. Audience skews heavily to watch India matches, the semi-finals & Finals, all other matches have lower significance -a "wastage" factor in the case of tournaments involving lots of teams.
3. High flux in TVR's both within the match and across matches.
4. Soaps on other channels will still be watched through surfing - Could affect TVR's of commercial breaks in soaps too.
5. Non-live cricket programming has low viewership.

All the day matches are expected to end latest by 9.30 p.m. IST. Which means audience still have time to watch their favourite soaps across primetime - Most of the world cup fixtures that India plays in South Africa are day matches; only one match against England will be a day night match.

While world-cup is for a period of 2 months from 8th Feb to 23rd March, the impact will surely be higher from the 7th of March, when the next round of matches begin to the end of the tournament. If one were to qualify the 'wastage factor' (Total number of India matches plus matches in the critical phase as a ratio of the total matches telecast), it works out to 28% on the World Cup 2003, as compared to 33% on the ICC tournament - Sri Lanka. This ratio treats all matches of India and the super-sixes as having the same higher viewing intensity than other matches, though the ratio will even out across matches with the cricket die-hard likely to prefer an Australia-Pakistan as compared to an India-Holland.

If one were to extrapolate the numbers based on the format, the telecast timings, the flux, etc, it does look like World Cup 2003 on an average will bring in lower numbers than the ICC tournament - Sri Lanka. The average is critical, as both Set Max and DD are expected to drive the advertiser to buy the average rather than the specific match.

What Initiative Media recommends…

1. Brands can derive a lot of saliency from the World Cup, but brands can definitely do without going on the World Cup, and still get a good and more efficient media burst.
2. This is primarily because prime time viewership is not likely to get affected much as most of the matches are day matches. Substantial knowledge is now available on how cricket will affect viewing patterns on regular programming. Smarter scheduling on days and dayparts can be used to minimise the impact of the World Cup telecast.
3. However viewership of niche channels are likely to shift to Cricket matches and maybe even to non-India cricket. Advertisers on niche channels need to be wary of this fact and have to re-look at the time band that they need to be present in.
4. Go for the world cup only if there is sufficient money to cut through the clutter across matches.
5. Properties on world cup will help given their noticeability & ability to present the brand across the tournament.