New Delhi: The eleventh edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) witnessed 211.5 million impressions across urban and rural markets in its second week, up 5.9% from last year. A total of nine matches were played in the week, between 9 and 17 April. Last year, the second week viewership data stood at 199.6 million impressions.

The numbers, provided by Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) India, represent viewers above two years of age who watched the matches across 10 television feeds of Star India, the official broadcast network of the T20 tournament, as well as DD Sports.

Impressions refer to the number of individuals in thousands of a target audience who viewed an event, averaged across minutes. Reach is the number of target households in thousands where the event was viewed for at least one minute.

Star Sports 1 Hindi maintained its second-most viewed channel spot with 949.03 million impressions, after Tamil-language general entertainment channel Sun TV in Barc’s top ten most-watched channels list.

While television viewership numbers have gone up from last year for the second week, Star India claimed that its video streaming platform continues to attract more viewers.

“The viewership on Hotstar has set new global records for live sports peak concurrency, touching 7 million in the Royal Challengers Bengaluru vs Chennai Super Kings game on 25 April, beating the previous record at 6 million peak concurrency achieved in the Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru game on 17 April," the statement read.

For the first time, the tournament is being broadcast in four regional languages—Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali. Star India said that there has been a 39% increase in reach in south Indian markets after the second week.

Star India’s CEO Uday Shankar had told Mint earlier this month that the firm is expecting this year’s revenue to go up to Rs2,000 crore, compared with Rs1,200 crore that Sony Pictures Network made in 2017. Last year, Star India bought the five-year television and digital media rights for IPL for Rs16,347.5 crore.

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