The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Thursday (April 2) revealed that the recently-concluded ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 in Australia was the most-watched ICC women’s event ever with the astonishing 1.1 billion total video views across the platforms.
The ICC revealed the digital and broadcast viewing figures on Thursday for the Women’s T20 World Cup 2020, which has become one of the most-watched women’s sporting events in history last month.
The sport’s governing body further went on to claim that that the ICC’s digital channels were in overdrive during the 21 February to 8 March event in Australia, making the Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 second most successful ICC event after the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup last year in England.
The T20 World Cup final between India and Australia Women also achieved the record viewership in both countries with the 1.78 billion fans watching the live match action on TV – that figures were 59 times more than the final of the previous edition in 2018 between Australia and England.
Meanwhile, the live average audience for the final in India was 9.02 million – 154 percent higher than the second most-viewed match in the competition – the tournament opener between Australia and India on February 21, while the digital streaming figures were also impressive in India, peaking at 3.1 million for concurrent users of Hotstar during the final at the MCG.
While Australia, the average audience for the final was 1.2 million in Australia, the overall viewing minutes across the whole event in India was 5.4 billion.
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ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said: “These quite outstanding broadcast and digital numbers demonstrate the power of women’s cricket to aggregate a huge global audience and engage fans.”
Sawhney continued, “This undoubtedly consolidates our position as one of the leading women’s sports in the world and we want to build on the momentum from this event and create a long-term sustainable foundation for the game. It reinforces our belief that there is a significant opportunity around the women’s game and collectively we must promote it further so more fans can watch it, more kids are inspired by it and sponsors and broadcasters want to be a part of it.”
He signed off by saying, “We’ve built on the record-breaking success of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 and continued our focus on deepening engagement with existing fans and bringing new fans to the game with relevant, engaging content that goes beyond match highlights. Cricket fans want competitive cricket with context and the world’s best players did not disappoint in Australia earlier this year.”
(With IANS Inputs)
