Express News Service By

CHENNAI: The law of marginal utility is a concept that propounds that ‘when a consumer starts consuming a said good over and over again, there is a decline in the marginal utility that the consumer derives from consuming each additional unit of that product while keeping all other factors constant’. For eample: even if a person likes gol gappas, the satisfaction he/she derives from eating them will lessen after each and every unit of it consumed.

It’s one of the most fundamental laws of economics and it seems to have struck the Indian Premier League (IPL). If the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) figures are to be believed for the last week, more and more people are searching for their remote controls to change the channel. The “first match of the ninth edition of the IPL — between Mumbai Indians and Pune Supergiants — had an average Television Viewership Rating (TVR) of 3.24,” according to a website. That compares poorly with last season’s first match — TVR of 5.74 between Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai.

The ratings have plummeted since the opening night according to the website. “The next match, between Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Daredevils, dipped to 2.55. The numbers for the following five matches were 2.98, 3.50, 3.66, 2.86 and 2.23, respectively.” These numbers again compare poorly to last year’s figures.

But an IPL Governing Council source wasn’t too worried. “One has to keep in mind the tournament started just a week after WT20,” he said. “It’s early days and the interest would gradually pick up. We are not worried by the numbers because we know the public like the IPL and you see the kind of crowds we are getting.”

That theory doesn’t hold enough water because the ratings for the opening weeks of the 2011 IPL weren’t this bad and that edition started shortly after India won the 50-over World Cup. “The opening game of the 2011 IPL saw the highest TV ratings across six key markets since the league’s debut season,” a cricket website had written. But the source remained defiant and suggested that one reason behind the low numbers maybe because of India’s continuous T20I exertions. “India has been playing a lot of T20s since January and maybe that is also a reason.”