There was an article on this website last week about the collections of Race 3 and how a clown tried to play games with its box office collections. The article can be read here. The industry was quick to guess who the clown was and even clues did not have to be given. Even readers made no mistake especially SRK fans who were quick to remind us that it was not only Chak De India and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi whose super success was attempted to be downplayed but others as well.

The funniest thing was that clown was also very quick to recognize it was him. The article was true but pretty negative so normally one would not think its not them straightaway but not the clown, he knew it was him and it probably flustered him and within no time was making comments how comScore was now in India and had tracked PK and will do Sanju. Its surprising the clown even knows what comScore is but he must have tried to fudge some Overseas numbers but got told Overseas figures are measured by comScore (probably Rentrack then) and figures are there in foreign media for all to see. The clown obviously knows about comScore but has no clue as to how they work.

ComScore is a measurement platform of audiences and consumer behavior be it television, cinema and digital. We will only be talking about the cinema side as that is most important to our industry. This side of comScore is called IBOE (International Box Office Essentials) and those who want more information can go here. Anybody who takes cinema and box office seriously will have some sort of access to IBOE. 

The majority of our major film production houses have access to this as most of our Overseas markets are tracked through IBOE. Some of the industry is aware how comScore works especially the studios but most of the independent producers are less aware so when the clown makes such comments they start thinking the results of India box office will start appearing like they do for US, UK or Australia all of which are tracked by comScore and some were even looking for the charts for India like they are available for US last weekend but they were not to be seen. We could not find them also but sort of knew that. Of course the clown may have seen them but then he saw the Race 3 figures there also and probably other 50-70 crore inflated films also.

The first point is comScore is important for the India market, not because of fudged collections by the clown or everybody else has different figures but because it gives accurate measurement which gives studios a one point research base with all the data allowing them to make better choices when it comes to releasing their films. At the moment these figures have to be sourced from many places and sometimes the makers themselves dont have correct numbers from which they are calculating from.

The second and most important point is comScore is an independent measuring platform and it does not track films be it PK or Sanju . It tracks the whole market and numbers come from the cinemas themselves and they are added to get a total. If PK was tracked by comScore it would not just have the figures of that film but all the other films playing at the time across India be it Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Punjabi or Telugu and its the same for Sanju, there is no pick and choose scenario for comScore, either the screens in India are linked to the comScore platform like in US or UK to give numbers for all films or they are not. Only the clown can say PK was tracked and now after four years its Sanju as its simply absurd that at the time of PK all the screens were recorded by comScore and then they took a break and came back for Sanju. comScore is an international company with a huge reputation and only the clown can make a mockery of them with ridiculous quotes which totally change the system of how they work

Comscore have been in India since 2010 and at that time it was Rentrak. There were around 80-90 cinemas which gave actual real time collections on their system IBOE but this was not really helping the industry much as so limited so it was stopped. Now coming back to 2018 we at BoxOfficeIndia have a reach of around 60% of the Hindi market as in cinema collections and this is for a big film like Race 3 but that is at the end of the week. On an all India (all language films) basis this reach is probably around 25% and comScore being as big as they are should have more if they are serious about measuring in India. But that we dont know as figures do not come up on IBOE.

The the problem this gives comScore is they could have reported figures of all the 25 odd films playing across India last week but the reach for some films would be 10% of the total collections and others could be 90% or even 100% if playing on limited screens. The reach in US and UK is around 99-100% for practically all the films. If you are reporting 10% of one film and 100% of another film this will only confuse the market more and not be of any use.

The hurdles that comScore face in India is to get that reach near to the 100% mark for all releases for it to really work in a big way in India. This will mean daily figures from most cinemas across India and the job will be done. Its all about getting figures from the cinemas electronically when a ticket is sold like they do in other markets but this is one huge task in India.

Also when comScore is tracking India properly it will be be the whole market and the figures of every single film playing in the country and the screens its is playing on and the numbers will in the national newspapers and business newspapers in a chart form like in the West. If its the clown alone then the industry knows what it is and there is not much for us to say about that.

As for the fans of megastars and the clown talking bad about films like Chak De India or even Race 3 then all we say is just do a bit of research. Race 3 is mentioned because its a badly made film and even the most loyal Salman Khan fans will have to accept that. We are not saying the box office is bad but the film no doubt it is. But if people do research then they can find out that the clown attempted to a direct a TV serial, the TV serial got axed and that channel went defunct some time back. Race 3 is bad but if you want to know what is really bad then do research as disasters do not come bigger than what the clown did and Race 3 compared to that is a masterpiece though the clown may not agree. As for Chak De India if some maker of disaster TV serial calls it bad then what is there to say. The point for fans is that usually these people who dissect films and go after them have usually done disaster work themselves.