MUMBAI: While there may be a debate over whether a strong sports brand can be built without India cricket, one thing is clear. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) draws viewers even when India plays in a cricket tournament..
A case in point is last month's cricket "mini-World Cup", the Champions Trophy, held in the second half of September. TAM data provided for the period 18-25 September indicates that the edition of World Wrestling Entertainment's (WWE) Raw, which aired on 20 September on Ten Sports, got a rating of 0.95 c&s 4+.
Among the metros, Mumbaiikars are the most hooked on to the "choreographed" wrestling that WWE represents. The Raw episode got a rating of 1.35 in Mumbai. The highest rated WWE show in Mumbai, however, was Smackdown (21 September) which managed a rating of 2.54.
Interestingly, even if wrestling is taken out of the equation, Ten Sports' news bulletins still managed far higher ratings than what ESPN and Star Sports got combined. .
Sports Update on Ten Sports, which had an all-India rating of 0.63, outscored the combined rating of ESPN Star Sports' top programmes, Football Focus and Sportsline, at 0.23.
As many as 37 shows on Ten Sports managed a rating of over 0.23 which was the maximum that ESS got. Cricket is said to be opium of the Indian masses. Yet the special Samsung Super Skills on Star Sports on 24 September was left gasping with a rating of 0.10.
Another startling finding is that on Ten Sports, after the wrestling programmes and news shows, the next highest rated programme was Gamer TV, which managed a decent rating of 0.22. Taking WWE and Gamer TV together, what this appears to indicate is that Ten Sports has caught on well with the younger audiences (teens and pre-teens).
Speaking of younger audiences, one wonders whether Ten Sports will in due course do an interactive initiative for the WWE similar to that which has been introduced recently in the US and Europe. Taboo Tuesday allows American and European WWE fans to vote online on what match ups they want to see at this special event. For instance, fans had to choose whether they wanted Triple H to defend his title against Edge, Shawn Michaels or Chris Benoit. Normally these kind of decisions are left to the discretion of the programming manager Eric Bischoff.
On the hockey front, meanwhile, Ten's telecast of the match between India and Pakistan on 24 September got a rating of 0.18.
