#IPL2019 - Will it up the ante for "Brand IPL"

Did you know?

#IPL2019 has already started.

As obvious it may sound to some readers, a lot many are oblivious to this fact.

Last night, my dad came in late as he had an appointment with his dentist. The first thing he asked me was about the match. He informed me that #IPL2019 has started and he was following the match in the clinic, while waiting for his turn. He was surprised, and slightly amused that I had totally missed it. He asked for the match result, and instead of hitting "Google", I went to Twitter. I got the result there, informed my dad about it and then went about scrolling through my timeline.

I could not help but notice that the overall buzz seemed pretty low as compared to previous years. So, I thought of doing some manual search on Twitter to see very few mentions on my timeline and from people I follow.

Then I used Sysomos to dig in further. Check out the table below for a quick overview:

• Compared pre-IPL buzz (7 days before first match) for 2018 and 2019; chatter was down by almost 25%
• Compared the volume for the first match of 2018 ( Mumbai Indians v/s Chennai Super Kings) with that of the 2019 (Chennai Super Kings v/s Royal Challengers Bangalore); here the numbers had decreased by a whopping 40%

While I understand the challenges of using Google Trends, still went ahead with it, since I wanted an apple-to-apple comparison - have a look at the image below. In line with the Twitter conversations, even search queries for IPL related terms seemed to be very low. This might however change, as the tournament goes forward and people then start searching to check the match results and points table. But for now, the pre-IPL search numbers are comparatively pretty low.

Ofcourse, consumption numbers from OTT platforms would help understand the complete picture. But for now, based on the initial social chatter, #IPL2019 seems to be on a sticky wicket.

Tools Used: Sysomos Search (Meltwater), Google Trends