Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Best served cold?

I don't get the IPL connection in the story and let me assure you not too many people bought tickets to watch IPL games - at least I bought none, but still watched five of seven games in Delhi. And believe me, I was not alone. Anyway, this is a Sidewinder missile at 9X, makes for entertaining reading though. Won't get into the financial plans of General Entertainment Channels though, because I don't watch them and therefore have no frikkin' clue!
But to add to the point, the IPL is more than just ticket sales - I was told by an extremely reliable source, who cannot be named because of Ramadoss - that while the Royal Challengers Bangalore were godawful last year, sales of RC climbed some 30 per cent afterwards. C'mon even KKR dropped off after their amazing start, but because SRK managed to sell KKR as a Bong team rather than a 'Kolkata' team, it got the entire diaspora excited. Sales of other stuff certainly increased and the teams made money from selling lounges and general gobbledegook. But then again, in reality only Kolkata, Punjab and Rajasthan made any money last year. And while the first season was a ratings success and I'm sure that season 2 will be a ratings success, it remains to be seen if the IPL will make 'money'. Money does not guarantee success of more money - just look at Chelsea Football Club.
So how successful has the IPL really been? Maybe, we'll answer that once the elections are over. What will be really interesting this time is that the IPL and the General Elections, or least the campaigning will definitely coincide, and that should lead to interesting news bulletins. So for eight weeks, half the paper will be politics and half the paper cricket. But newspapers can still run larger editions, can you imagine the chaos in the news channels. Nobody will watch the news because everyone will be busy watching cricket. Dang, what an absolutely brilliant move by Lalit Modi!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i wish they start the IPL matches at 7.00pm and not 8.00pm like last yr.