IPL has been having a great run this year, breaking all viewership records. But would things have been different if there was cinema to compete with cricket? Or vice- versa?
As theatres open up in the country after a prolonged shutdown due to the Covid pandemic, it’s instructive to look at data from previous years. Interestingly, when IPL debuted, over a decade ago, it looked as though the movie industry would face a bouncer from the tournament. Not really.
During the first edition of IPL in 2008, movies such as
Analysing the trends of 2010, a FICCI-KPMG report on the media and entertainment industry noted that competition from IPL had created an eight-week black window for multiplexes.
Over 650 single-screen theatres, in fact, chose to screen IPL that year.
Khiladi's big play
However, in 2012, the khiladi of Bollywood, Akshay Kumar, broke the IPL jinx when Houseful-2 smashed into the ₹100-crore club in box-office earnings. In 2013, Ashiqui 2 scored big during the IPL window. A year later, 2 States , a movie based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel, earned over ₹100 crore. In 2015, Tanu Weds Manu Returns , starring Kangana Ranaut and R Madhavan, released during the IPL, became a blockbuster.
The Jungle Book , which was released a day before the IPL opening match in 2016, made over ₹180-crore in India. But it was Baahubali-2: The Conclusion, released during the 2017 IPL, that put the IPL vs movies perception to rest by grossing over ₹500 crore at the box office.
While the Aalia Bhatt-starrer Raazi earned more than ₹100 crore during the IPL of 2018, Akshay Kumar’s Kesari that was released two days before the start of next year’s IPL, also grossed over ₹150 crore.
Even a niche film like The Tashkent Files did well at the box office during the 2019 IPL window. Says the film’s director, Vivek Agnihotri, “It’s a myth that films don’t work during IPL. I had done my research and found no correlation between the two.”