A staggering 9.02 million fans in India watched Harmanpreet Kaur and Co take on Australia in the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup final, breaking all viewership records across TV as well as digital platforms.
First-time finalists India were beaten by the hosts at the historic Melbourne Cricket Ground where 86,174 people were present for the summit clash, another record.
The ICC released a viewership data on Thursday which revealed that the total viewing minutes for the tournament across India was 5.4 billion. Total viewing minutes a calculation based on how many people watched any particular match and 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.
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