Cricket Returns, Viewers Don’t: The Impact of IPL’s Interrupted Momentum
By Umang Poddar
Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Virat Kohli brought home the much-awaited IPL trophy. 18 years after the drubbing they received in the first ever IPL match, the team has come of age.
Three weeks ago, though, all of this seemed highly improbable – not due to RCB’s form (which has been stellar throughout), but because the tournament shut down, literally, in front of our eyes. The skirmishes at the India-Pakistan border escalated to a level unprecedented in IPL’s history. The tournament, not for the first time, had to be suspended indefinitely on May 8, 2025.
YouGov surveyed its panelists to gauge how they felt about the IPL restarting in the w/c May 12.
The results unanimously underscored the popularity of the game and the tournament, with almost 50% of respondents eager for the restart.
In a nation as obsessed with cricket as any, the tense context surrounding the restart also explains why 1 out of 5 respondents reported to have either lost interest in the season or believed that it should be delayed further.
Furthermore, 23% of the respondents who were following the season said they were neither extremely nor somewhat likely to watch if the tournament restarts.
The viewership metrics stand to prove the waning interest in the first week post the restart.
To ensure cross-season comparability, our analysis focused solely on the first innings of the evening matches that were completed as scheduled across the 2024 and 2025 IPL seasons. Matches rescheduled or abandoned were excluded to maintain consistency.
The week after the restart on May 18 (May 17 game was washed out) was the leanest 5-match phase of IPL over the past two seasons for linear TV audiences. The leanest phase of 2025 was 12% lower than the corresponding number of 2024.
Leanest phase is defined as the lowest audience average recorded in a run of 5 consecutive matches, until the 50th completed evening match of a season.
The games this season in the leanest phase were:
- May 18: Delhi Capitals vs Gujarat Titans
- May 19: Lucknow Supergiants vs Sunrisers Hyderabad
- May 20: Chennai Super Kings vs Rajasthan Royals
- May 21: Mumbai Indians vs Delhi Capitals
- May 22: Gujarat Titans vs Lucknow Supergiants
To put this into seasonal perspective; the leanest phase of 2025 was 26% lower than the season’s average viewership until that point. The corresponding figure for 2024 was 15%.
To ensure that the nature of the season itself had little to do with the drop in viewership, the team at YouGov Sport compared the average viewership of the first innings of the first five evening games (mentioned above) post restart with the average viewership of the first innings of the preceding 20 evening and completed matches of the tournament. The same was done for the 2024 season.
Before the break, the 2025 season was clocking marginally better average viewership than that observed in 2024; meaning the season experienced lateral growth of viewership year on year. It is after the break, towards the business end of the group phase, where the viewership dropped significantly enough to raise eyebrows. For 2025, the drop in viewership was 21%, while the corresponding numbers for 2024 was 2%.
We see a more normalised version of the story when we move from ‘Average Audiences’ to ‘Viewer Hours’, which considers the amount of programme coverage along with the audiences watching.
It wasn’t just broadcast audiences that showed a decline in engagement following the IPL’s mid-season suspension—secondary media channels reflected a similar downturn. The usual momentum that typically builds as the tournament progresses was noticeably absent in 2025 compared to 2024. An analysis of article reach and social media activity across both years reveals a flattened trend in 2025, particularly after the disruption.
To better understand this shift, the season was divided into three phases:
- Sector 1: Pre-India/Pakistan tensions
- Sector 2: During the tensions, while matches continued
- Sector 3: Post-tensions, after the tournament resumed
In Sector 1, secondary media reach in 2025 actually outperformed 2024, averaging 5.6 billion more daily impressions (cumulative across several platforms)—a 9% increase. However, this trend reversed sharply in Sector 2 (game days 32 to 48), where 2025 saw a 27% drop in average daily reach (22.0 billion fewer impressions) compared to the same period in 2024. This decline coincided with a shift in media focus from cricket to geopolitical developments.
Even after the tensions subsided and the IPL resumed, the downward trend persisted. In Sector 3, the average daily reach fell even further—36.2 billion impressions lower, marking a 37% year-on-year decline. The only exception was the final match, where RCB’s historic win generated more media reach than KKR’s title win in 2024, briefly bucking the season’s overall trend.
One particularly unexpected insight from the secondary media analysis is the lack of a spike in media mentions on May 17, the day IPL play resumed. Instead of a surge in coverage typically associated with such a high-profile restart, mention trends remained relatively flat, mirroring the subdued engagement seen throughout much of the season. The only noticeable uplift in media activity occurred during the playoff phase, suggesting that broader interest failed to reignite until the tournament’s climax. Given this muted media presence, it’s unsurprising that secondary media reach in 2025 failed to surpass 2024 levels.
The notional loss in viewership and engagement likely widened the gap between projected and actual Gross Advertising Value (GAV) available throughout the 2025 IPL tournament, impacting key sponsorship partners such as Tata. As a result, YouGov Sport’s next analytical focus will be to quantify this impact and assess whether IPL’s central sponsors were able to mitigate audience shortfalls through enhanced branding strategies. In scenarios where viewership falters, factors like exposure quality and on-screen time can still play a crucial role in preserving sponsorship value—potentially salvaging returns even in a disrupted season.
Methodology
YouGov polled 1,000 Indians in May 2025. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys. Data is weighted by age, gender, education level, region, and social grade.