MUMBAI: The experiment of telecasting live cricket in a kids channel seems to have worked for Disney. The three Champions League Twenty20 matches got a cumulative reach of 7.5 million on Disney Channel and 6.3 million on Disney XD, demonstrating that the T20 format is popular among the youth audiences.

While the reach growth was remarkable, the ratings rose but still stayed below 1 TVR. The matches, which featured some of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises, fetched an average TVR of 0.16 on Disney Channel and 0.17 on Disney XD, according to Tam data.

Says Disney associate director, programming, Devika Prabhu, "We specifically targeted co-viewing in line with the themes of sports and spirit of accomplishment which is integral to the DNA of Disney XD. And what better way to engage a young fan and their family than cricket. To kick off this promotion, we ran a contest on Disney XD which received about 70,000 entries in a little over a week. It had three lucky winners meet the Captains of the three Indian teams in South Africa and featured in the pre and post show of the matches." 
 
The channels more than doubled their viewership in a specific target segment. Says Prabhu, "Viewership across the channels more than doubled in the 4-14 TG and brought in an incremental 433 per cent in family viewership. An incremental 2.7 million viewers (up 54 per cent) tuned into the channels across the first two matches (7.6 million versus 4.9 million)."

While Disney Channel‘s viewership amongst kids for the time-slot grew by 160 per cent, co-viewing across the time-slot grew by 375 per cent as compared to the previous four weeks. The slot reached an additional two million viewers, up 80 per cent at 4.4 million, as compared to the previous four-week average of 2.4 million.

Disney XD got a boost among its core 10-14-year-olds in the kids genre with a 34 per cent market share, according to Prabhu. The slot reached an additional 1.4 million viewers, up 67 per cent at 3.4 million as compared to the previous four-week average of two million.

In terms of viewership, the slot grew 400 per cent to an average of 0.15 TVR during the cricket matches as compared to the previous four weeks.