Mumbai: With more and more matches of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) ending in nail-biting finishes, the excitement, hype and the adrenalin rush, along with the fact that India continuous to be a single TV household, is making female audiences to let go of their favourite daily soaps on general entertainment channels (GECs), and switch to IPL As per BARC viewership data sourced from a subscriber, during the first three weeks of the IPL, Hindi GECs – Star Plus, Colors, Sony Entertainment Television, Zee TV, &TV, Star Bharat and Sony Sab – collectively lost almost 10% female (15+ years) viewership in the Hindi speaking markets (HSM) during primetime hours of 7 pm – midnight.In terms of average impressions in the three weeks (March 23- April 12) Colors and &TV lost maximum — 22% and 15% — of their female audience, respectively, while Zee TV and Sony Entertainment registered a drop of around 8% each.It is important to note that GECs attract mass audiences and command over Rs 11,000-13,000 crore in advertising dollars, which is almost 35% of the overall advertising spend on television.“During IPL historically we have seen viewership of other genres go down. GECs are more skewed towards female audiences; it is not unusual to see a drop in female viewership considering that India is still a single TV household,” said Navin Khemkha, CEO at Mediacom South Asia.Khemkha added that the performance of IPL is also a big factor. “Given that this time more teams are performing better and the matches are more competitive, the interest in the tournament is also more than previous year.”Overall timespent per (female) viewer also dropped to 264 minutes, from an average of 289 minutes, registering a 8.8% drop, while overall market share of the seven channels in the HSM, saw a 9.6% drop – from 29.8% to 26.9%.However, the data also suggests that a major chunk of this female audience came back to catch up on daily soaps during the repeat telecast, which resulted in almost zero impact on the overall weekly reach of the channels.A senior executive of a GEC said that IPL is a 50-day phenomenon, but daily soaps are a habit. “With more than 90% of the Indian TV households having only one TV, it is quite possible for the women to cede control of the remote in the primetime, but they won’t let go of their shows. They come back to watch either on TV while repeat telecast, or on the OTT players,” he summed up.Earlier this week, ET reported that the average viewership number of women watching IPL has increased almost 18% in the first three weeks to 10.3 million impressions, which has also triggered a rush among brands focusing on women, such as Lotus Herbals, Fena Detergent, Senco Gold & Diamonds, Usha International, Rasna, Fashion Big Bazaar and FabIndia, for sponsorship or advertising either on television or with teams.