The International Cricket Council (ICC) today revealed a record of digital and broadcast viewing figures for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020, which has turned into one of the most-watched women’s sporting events in the history as the sport continues to set new standards on and off the field.
ICC’s digital channels remained in overdrive during the 21 February to 8 March event in Australia, with an amazing 1.1 billion total video views, making it the most viewed ICC women’s event ever and the second most successful ICC event after the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019.
The figure was more than 20 times the video views in the previous edition played in the West Indies in 2018 and 10 times the last most successful women’s cricket event, which was the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2017.
The record-breaking trend continued employing broadcast with the final of the event attaining record viewership in both India and Australia after their teams played in front of 86,174 fans at Melbourne Cricket Ground on International Women’s Day.
As India made the final of the event for the first time, 1.78 billion fans watched live match action on TELEVISION of that game alone. The figure is 59 times more than the final of the previous edition in 2018 between Australia and England and made up 35 percent of the total viewership for the competition.
The average live audience for the final in India was 9.02 million, higher than all matches of the 2018 competition played in the West Indies. This figure is 154 percent greater than the second most seen match in the competition. The total viewing minutes across the entire event in India was 5.4 billion, practically three times more than the 2018 edition.
The digital streaming figures too were excellent in India, peaking at 3.1 million for concurrent users of Hotstar during the final In Australia, the typical audience for the final was 1.2 million, making it the most-watched women’s cricket match and the sixth-most viewed cricket match ever on subscription tv in Australian broadcast history.
It reinforces our belief around Women’s game, states ICC Chief Executive Manu Sahney.
ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said “These quite impressive broadcast and digital numbers show the power of women’s cricket to aggregate a huge global audience and engage fans This certainly consolidates our position as one of the leading women’s sports in the world and we wish to develop on the momentum from this event and develop a long-lasting, sustainable foundation for the game.
“It strengthens our belief that there is a substantial opportunity around the women’s game and jointly we should promote it even more so more fans can watch it, more kids are influenced by it, and sponsors and broadcasters want to be a part of it.
“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 material that surpasses match highlights. Cricket fans want competitive cricket with context, and the world’s best players did not disappoint in Australia earlier this year.”
