The 12th edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 in England has been ranked as the most-watched ICC event of all time with a global cumulative average live audience of 1.6 billion.
According to latest data and figures released by the sports’ governing body – ICC on Monday (September 16), 2019 edition of the World Cup that saw England lift their maiden ODI trophy at Lord’s, was the most-watched cricketing event ever.
The 2019 mega ICC event also recorded a 38% increase over the 2015 World Cup with a unique broadcast audience of 706 million viewers, while saw a 42% increase in average time watched per unique viewer in comparison to the last edition of the 50-over tournament.
The ICC also stated that the 706 million unique audiences were a 22% increase as compared to last season in which 41% of the audience were women, while 32% were aged 18 to 34 of the 706 million.
This event also set another record of being watched for a longer amount of time than ever before, amassing a record 13.7 billion global viewing hours.
It was also the most widely available ICC event in history with more than 20,000 hours of live action, repeats and highlights coverage carried by 25 broadcast partners across more than 200 territories.
Meanwhile, the group match between India and Pakistan was the most watched match globally of the World Cup 2019 with 273 million unique viewers watching linear TV coverage and 50 million more viewers across digital platforms.
On the other hand, India’s semi-final World Cup clash against New Zealand also drew 25.3 million viewers on Hotstar, which is a world record for the highest ever concurrent viewership of a live stream.
ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said, “These quite astounding numbers demonstrate the power of live cricket to connect and engage more deeply with diverse audiences around the world. The theatre and drama of live cricket are compelling and the added jeopardy of tournament cricket enables our sport to cut through and aggregate audiences like never before even in our increasingly fragmented world.”
While Aarti Dabas, ICC Head of Media Rights, Broadcast and Digital said on the numbers, “More people are watching, more hours of cricket on different platforms than ever before. The consumption of live matches on digital platforms is evidence of fans watching live sport differently and wanting to be fully immersed in the sport and this is an exciting time for cricket.”
(With ICC inputs)
