Champions League has been a disaster, atleast as far as the eyeballs go – It has been summarily sidelined by Indian TV as well as general Audience.
Champions League T20 was coined as the global cousin of uber-popular IPL and was supposed to bring in global Audience. I dont think anything of that sort has happened. Infact, even the local audience seem to have shrugged it off.
Just to point you at certain facts:
The first match of the Champions League cricket tournament scored an average television rating point (TRP) of 0.9% on ESPN Star Sports channel on 8 October, according to Audience Measurement and Analytics Ltd.
Although the tournament still has long way to go, experts believe the poor start reflects flailing viewership response towards big-ticket cricket events on TV, with the exception of the Indian Premier League (IPL) that started on 18 April with 3.6% TRPs and averaged 3.4% for the tournament
Even the recently concluded Champions Trophy had better TRP’s than CLT20. The world cup T20 tournament had also gathered a respectable 2.1% TRP rating.
Now thats TV, what about the stands? Are the stands full to capacity?
No ! Champions League T20 did not attract audience in the stands as well. Most of the matches have seen stands only half full.
So why is Champions League such a big failure?
Sanjay Jha, Founder of cricketnext and avid follower / writer of cricket has put it across nicely.
the Champions League is a guaranteed failure as a business model as it has none of the passionate adoration of the European football league across multiple countries. IPL is the pre-dominant cricket league and is lopsided further because of it’s India-centric obsession. The only way this ridiculous imitation will ever work is if there are sufficient Indian players playing in the foreign leagues for us Indians to follow their cricketing heroics.
But given India’s wallet-power that is virtually impossible to even contemplate. Of course, the BCCI will never allow free-market forces to ever influence that geographical transportation. Thus, this League seems to be certainly doomed.
Add to the fact that in the current League the 2 Indians teams Deccan Chargers as well as Delhi Daredevils are not really setting the stage on fire. Infact, they have not even qualified for the next stage.
Personally, I have not seen any of the matches of CLT20, while somehow I was quite hooked on to IPL T20. More than both of this though I am looking forward for the India-Australia Bilateral one day series.
T20 does not seem to be that big a threat to One day cricket as it has been made out to be.
Would love to hear your opinions on this!
Author: Arun Prabhudesai
Arun Prabhudesai is founder / chief editor at trak.in. He jumped the Entrepreneurship bandwagon in early 2008 after a long 13 year stint in I.T Industry. You can follow him on twitter @trakin or get in touch with him at 91.9822575676.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Agreed. Just yesterday I wrote a blog post about IPL vs. CL, and why CL doesn’t even come close to drawing the type of crowds and attention that IPL gets. Please see http://cricket-stalker.blogspot.com/2009/10/ipl-works-cl-doesnt.html
ONLY A NONSENSE CAN THINK LIKE THIS.ALWAYS AUDIENCE RATINGS DOES NOT MATTER AS IT HAS GOT ITS APPEAL IN THE YOUNG GENERATION BECAUSE OF THE AMAZING CRAZE IT CREATES.
So this craze you are talking about where is it? In the hearts of young generation? They are not watching it on TV or in the stadium.
The problem with Champions League is there is no connection. Only 3 teams which have Indian names and the rest, from the audience perspective, are some overseas county teams.
The competition might get some audience going forward provided all the 3 IPL teams are there till the last 4.
Champions League should have waited one more year to let the fans digest IPL and have the city connection going.
One more thing they can do is, to allow 2 Indian players in all overseas champions league teams (other than the 3 IPL teams). This holds good if the tournament happens in India. If it happens some where else then that country takes precedence.
Most of these are band-aid’s to get it going. In the long run the organizers have to limit the amount of cricket played.
Well said Sriram, second your opinion completely…
ohhh all this happened :O?? I always thought Champions League is from the makers of IPL. I nvr bothered to understand whts happening thr. Am I too lost here ;)
Well sir, its true whatever you have mentioned, as now there is two indian team to the super eight we need to see how this TRP will go.
The Problem is too much of T20 cricket.T20 is like Freestyle wresting,its about Power and less skills ( This is a opinion of a purist :)),so you just cannot take it more than a tournament or 2 in a year.
yeah….thats another reason…T20 has become just too much. 90% of all cricket this year has been T20. Everybody wants to be on T20 train. Just think, we have not played even 4 Tests in this whole year….
Overdose and Overhype will kill T20 ~!