Chairman of Indian Premier League, Lalit Modi, did everything in his fullest capacity to make sure the third season was a successful affair. It’s a different story that the man himself is in a lot of trouble today. One of the innovative things he conceptualized this season was that he gave the fans of the game an opportunity to watch the matches in theaters. Towards the end of tournament, he gave the viewers an option to watch the match in 3D also.These ideas never existed in the first two seasons of IPL.
However, initially this idea didn’t click as it failed to attract crowds and the screen allocated for the match was eventually used to show a movie. The other problem was that the theaters were not allowed to screen Mumbai Indian matches when they played in Mumbai. It has never happened that an idea suggested by Lalit Modi has failed to show results.
During the league matches, he also saw few matches in multiplexes in an attempt to promote and popularize it. The icing on the cake was watching the match in 3D.
When the tickets of the finals at D.Y Patil Stadium were up for sale, within a week all the tickets were sold out. The ones who failed to get the tickets got their share of excitement by going to the theaters to watch it.
However, this time, as Mumbai Indians was in the finals, it gave the fans a reason to cheer their home team by going to the nearest theater. Nilesh from Big Cinemas Vashi said, “All the screens that we had allocated for the match was houseful. Even 3D turned out to be a hit.”
Even in suburbs, it turned out to be successful for theaters. Movie Hub Goregaon had dedicated 3 screens for the IPL finals and one screen had the live match in 3D. “The normal screen was houseful. In 3D, there were only 15-20 unsold tickets”, said a spokesperson.
The ticket price is not similar to movie tickets. They were on the higher side. To watch 3D match, one had to shell out close to Rs 700 and normal viewing was priced at Rs 200. “We had allocated 3-4 screens in all centers across Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. All the shows including 3D were almost houseful,” said a spokesperson of Cinemax.
The IPL fever has ended and now it is time to watch movies in theaters and not cricket. Next few months are packed with many big releases and the big film up for release this Friday is Housefull directed by Sajid Khan.
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