The first qualifier of IPL 2018 between Chennai Super Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad created a new world record on Tuesday (May 22) with 8.26 million concurrent viewers logging onto Hotstar.

Faf du Plessis put on a show on Tuesday night to pull off a heist against Sunrisers Hyderabad. He played a blistering knock of 67* runs in just 42 balls to clinch a thrilling two-wicket victory for CSK. Thanks to Du Plessis’ herculean effort with the willow, CSK also become the first team to secure their spot in the final of IPL  2018.

Speaking to Reuters after the buzzing contest, Hotstar Chief Executive Ajit Mohan said: “If I look back over the tournament, we have been hitting new high quite frequently.”

“The first barrier we wanted to cross was the 5 million concurrency. Nobody had done that for a sporting event and for us that was a first milestone which we crossed early in the tournament. Tuesday was quite significant because… this is really establishing a new global benchmark in terms of the number of simultaneous users for an online event on video,” he added.

Back in 2012, Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s leap into the stratosphere from a balloon near the edge of space 24 miles (39 km) above Earth was streamed by a record audience of more than 8 million on YouTube.

It is said that Hotstar might witness even bigger audience during the Sunday’s IPL final between Chennai Super Kings and the winner of second qualifier between Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad.

“We genuinely believe that we can bring people online in India. We have hit a certain scale that has really allowed us to take off. We added 150 million users in April. We have invested dramatically in building technology capabilities. We have now built a platform that can take that sort of scale. A five million scale would be difficult to support on most video platforms even today,” Mohan concluded.