ICC Women’s World T20: 9 million in India watched final, 5.4 billion ‘viewing minutes’

Team Udayavani, Apr 2, 2020, 3:24 PM IST

Dubai: A whopping 9.02 million fans in India watched the ‘Women in Blue’ take on Australia in the ICC World T20 final, breaking all viewership records across TV as well as digital platforms.

India, though, were thrashed by the Southern Stars at the historic MCG where 86,174 people were present for the summit clash.

The ICC released a viewership data on Thursday which showed that Harmanpreet Kaur’s team struck a chord with the fans, leading to a staggering 5.4 billion total viewing minutes for the tournament across India.

Total viewing minutes is arrived at after a calculation based on how many people watched any particular match for how much duration.

ICC’s digital channels went overdrive during the February 21 to March 8 event in Australia, with an astonishing 1.1 billion total video views, making it the most watched event in the history of women’s cricket. In fact, it was the most watched cricket event after the 2019 Men’s World Cup.

The figure was more than 20 times the video views delivered in the previous edition played in the West Indies in 2018 and 10 times the previous most successful women’s cricket event, which was the ICC World Cup in 2017.

As India made the final of the event for the first time, fans watched 1.78 billion minutes of live match action on TV of that game alone. The figure is 59 times more than the final of the previous edition in 2018 between Australia and England, and comprised 35 per cent of the overall viewership for the tournament.

The digital streaming figures too were impressive in India, peaking at 3.1 million for concurrent users of Hotstar during the final.

In Australia, the average audience for the final was 1.2 million, making it the most watched women’s cricket match and the sixth-most watched cricket game ever on subscription television in Australian broadcast history.

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.

“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.”

“We have 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.