About 80 million of ISL’s viewers now from non-urban areas: Star

NEW DELHI | MUMBAI: Rural and semi-urban India account for nearly half of the viewership of the ongoing second season of the Rupert Murdoch and Mukesh Ambani-promoted Indian Super League ( ISL) so far, challenging the notion that football is popular mainly in urban areas. As per data provided by broadcaster Star, as many as 46% of the 173 million viewership of the league between the second and seventh weeks came from rural and semi-urban areas. While 93 million viewers were in urban centres, 80 million were in rural and semi-urban areas.

“The fact that rural India is watching football almost similar to urban India and is getting deeper is a big surprise. This is a big departure from the expectations of a lot of people,” said Sanjay Gupta, chief operating officer of Star India. Till recently viewership in rural and semi-urban areas was not tracked. The Broadcast Audience Research Council India started releasing data on rural viewership only in the second half of October.

According to BARC, rural data emanates from towns that have less than one lakh population. Unlike cricket, which is believed to be popular across the country, football has been considered popular mainly in urban centres, barring West Bengal, Kerala and Goa, where the sport is known to have a greater reach.

Anita Nayyar, chief executive officer for India and South Asia at media buying group Havas Media, said while cricket is much followed, there are pockets in which football are very popular, even in rural parts. “The idea of setting up ISL was to localise viewership and grow the football market and that objective has been met,” she said. Football viewership in India is usually equated with international football, which is watched by people in urban India. “Playing football in the streets, you tend to think regionally rather than towns.

One does not expect rural India to be watching so much football,” said marketing and social commentator Santosh Desai. The rural viewership figures also reveal the efficacy of the strategy to broadcast ISL in different languages such as Tamil, Kannada, Bengali and Malayalam.