Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 broadcaster Sony today said under the BARC TV rating viewership of IPL could go up to 500 million as rural India will also be mapped.

“Under TAM rating, last IPL viewership was 200 million which included only urban market but in this edition of IPL it should be 500 million where rural viewership will also be captured,” Sony Pictures Network India Executive VP & business head (sports) Prasana Krishnan told PTI.

There will be some 60 matches in the IPL with eight teams in fray.

The event begins from April 9 and will continue till May 29.

The two new franchises — Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions — have replaced the suspended Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) for a period of two years.

Krishnan said CSK was important and may have some impact on Tamil Nadu but with entry of Pune franchisee, Maharashtra and with Rajkot, Gujarat the growth (revenue) will be phenomenal. “There will be some rebalancing but we are not going to get hurt in terms of revenue,” he said.

All the advertisement inventory had been sold out and this year demand was higher.

Sony said it was looking at 15-20 per cent jump in revenue from the broadcasting in the ninth edition of IPL.

While Sony IPL commentary will be aired in Hindi on Sony MAX and Sony SIX, Sony SIX will also carry Tamil, Telugu and Bengali language feeds in addition.

The English feed will be available on Sony ESPN and Sony ESPN HD channels.

“As the exclusive Television broadcaster of VIVO IPL, we are committed to taking on initiatives to increase the viewership of the game and continue our pioneering initiative of multi-language feeds in Tamil, Telugu and Bengali available across markets,” he said.

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