The ticket prices across the board have taken me by surprise, quite honestly. The ticket prices vary dramatically not only across stadiums, but even at the same ground, the ticket prices are priced widely. Coupled with the marked lack of interest at some venues of the tickets, this is quite surprising.

I think the owners had seen this coming, and have tried to price the tickets appropriately. The Mohali stadium, for example, is offering a large number of tickets for 50 bucks! 50 bucks!?! That’s way cheaper than Coffee at Coffee Day! The Punjab Kings, for sure, can expect a full stadium. To compensate for the large number of tickets that are being sold so cheaply, the Mohali Stadium has tickets going all the way up to Rs. 12,000! I’m sure there are a lot of Preity Zinta fans  that are willing to pay that much, especially since Preity has promised to watch all home team matches. But it may be getting desperate, as Preity and Bret Lee were seen outside the Stadium on Sunday, personally autographing the tickets.

There have been other surprises as well. The Deccan Chargers are selling tickets with some awesome promises. From their official blog: “Refreshments would be provided free to all spectators in all the stands. Fans would also be treated to a variety of exciting entertainment shows and fireworks at the stadium. Deccan Chargers have also announced a lucky draw scheme. With every ticket, you get a coupon for a chance to win fabulous prizes which include a Mercedes Benz (C Class), seven Maruti Swifts, 35 Yamaha motorbikes and 35 colour televisions.”

This sounds an awful lot like a desperate marketing gimmick by some Japanese TV company. There are also (unconfirmed) rumors floating around in Bangalore that there’s going to be a free beer for every one in the stadium!

The subdued response has surprised me a little bit. If you’ve been reading the newspapers recently, the IPL has barely managed a passing reference in the news papers. What should have been a mad rush to get tickets has only been a damp response. This has to do with what is now looking like a certain boycott of the IPL matches by online media and some newspapers as well. Can the IPL really sustain itself without the hype-creating media by its side?

Rumor has it that only the inaugural match at Bangalore has obtained a decent response, and that too because SRK, Preity and company are going to make an appearance. What is going to be really embarassing is that if the stadiums are not sold out like at a typical ODI match in India. I’ve been talking to a lot of regular folks (not hard core cricket fans), and they seem not to care very much about going to the stadium to see the matches. It seems to be that each city has a small set of hard core fans that fill up the stadiums at every ODI match, but if there are enough people to fill up the stadium for 7 games in 6 weeks remains to be seen.