IPL, which is all set to embrace our eyelashes from April 18, has become a major worry for all the politicians, who are involved in their Lok Sabha campaigns, due to its over lapping with their campaign. Media analyst and trade are fairly confident, that IPL would swallow election campaign and viewers would be attracted more to IPL than election campaign.

Media analyst argue that IPL would be broadcasted only in one channel, whereas election campaign would be broadcasted in around 25 channels across India, so IPL is safer and clever bet for many people.

It was estimated that, average Television rating Point (TRP), which news channel would bring because of present polls would be around .6 to .7. Whereas IPL leveraged 6 to 7 TRP rating points last year.

Industry trends also epitomise the above statements, where a 10 seconds slot during IPL cost around 4 lakhs rupees, whereas news channels charges mere 2000 to 4000 rupees to broadcast their campaign for 10 seconds. Sponsorship fees to get associated with IPL is as high as 30 to 35 crores , but sponsorship for election coverage in news channels cost around mere 15 to 30 lakhs.

Media edge, a media buying company which conducted survey among 1500 TV viewers across 10 major cities including Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi found out clearly that viewers would vote in favour of IPL against elections.

Even history is in favour of IPL, where lok sabha elections of 2004 have managed to garner 93 Gross rating points (GRP) in TV viewership, IPL last season has managed around 300 GRP, which is way ahead of former one. But it is speculated, that IPL viewership would be affected, by 6 to 7 % compared to last year, because of elections.

According to Ashok Bharatwaj managing director of canon India, IPL offers a much reliable platform for them, to have a focussed target audience, which cannot be possible in election campaigns which are spread across the 25 news channels against 1 channel for IPL.

Many marketing heads and advertisers also feel, that IPL caters to universal audience, irrespective of age and gender, which is not the case mostly with the polls and many advertisers have preferred both the platforms, to reach their target audience.

Even a company like Max New York Life , which pulled out of IPL official sponsorship, owing to shift of IPL to south Africa, has bought lot of media space  during IPL  matches because of fear of ,losing out their valuable target audience. IPL is clearly way ahead of Lok sabha polls in pulling the crowds, which is evident even before the day of counting.