The World Test Championship final between India and New Zealand in Southampton last month was the most-watched match on average across the entire tournament, recording a total of aggregate worldwide unwavering viewers of 177 million, with live viewership of 130.6 million across 89 countries.
India came up with a large portion of the crowd with Star Sports and public broadcaster Door Darshan accounting for a gigantic 94.6 per cent consumption of the evenly contested match that saw New Zealand winning the game by eight wickets, and lifting an ICC trophy for the first time in their history. Notwithstanding the English-language world feed, Star had created channels for local language which are telecasted in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada.
ICC Chief Commercial Officer Anurag Dahiya says, “The viewership data for broadcast and digital coverage of the ICC World Test Championship Final presents a really heartening picture, showing strong consumption across territories and languages as well as formats.
“The ICC always strives to give the best possible viewership experience and will continue to invest in resources that enhance the viewing pleasure and engagement of our fans. We thank all our partners for contributing to this success and their support in continuing to elevate our standards in the coming years.”
In terms of viewership, New Zealand came up with stunning figures. Despite its small population and the unsuitable timing of broadcast, more than 200,00 people staying up all night or waking up early in the morning to watch their team displaying a performance of grit and brawn and winning the match on Sky Sport.
In the UK, Sky Sports recorded the highest watched game in the 2019-21 WTC cycle not involving the hosts England and the Reserve Day was also the most watched day of a non-England match since 2015.
With the launch of ICC’s OTT platform, ICC.tv came about in an extra 665,100 live views from more than 145 regions outside of the key telecast markets, adding up to 14 million viewing minutes.
ICC’s digital platforms observed a total of more than 500 million views, covering all video content which was watched throughout the final. Facebook imparted most of the utilisation across ICC’s digital assets with 423 million views and 368 million minutes consumed on ICC page.
Instagram added a further 70 million views across the match, with stories giving almost 10 per cent of these. Further contributions from the ICC site and mobile application, also ICC’s channels on Twitter and YouTube, took the total views to 515 million.
