Shaheen Afridi of Pakistan celebrates the wicket of Virat Kohli of India during the ICC Men's T20 World Cup match between India and Pakistan at Dubai International Stadium on October 24, 2021 in Dubai
Highlights
- India lost against Pakistan for the first time in World Cup history.
- Pakistan thrashed India by 10 wickets in the opening match of the WC.
- Shaheen Shah Afridi was named man of the match for taking three wickets in the game.
The ICC men's T20 World Cup delivered a record viewership globally, garnering a television reach of 167 million, the game's governing body said on Thursday.
With the tournament returning after five years, nearly 10,000 hours of live coverage was offered across TV and digital platforms in 200 countries. Increased viewership and consumption was witnessed in India, Pakistan, UK, Australia and the strategic market of USA.
The highly-anticipated India-Pakistan clash saw a record consumption of 15.9 billion minutes in India on the Star India Network.
The encounter is now the most viewed T20I match in history, exceeding the previous high of the India-West Indies semi-final match from the 2016 edition of the ICC event held in India, the ICC said.
The overall TV consumption for the full tournament in India was recorded at 112 billion minutes, despite India's early exit from the tournament.
"We are pleased with these outstanding global viewership numbers, that demonstrate the power of T20I cricket to attract a huge audience across the globe on linear and digital platforms," ICC CEO Geoff Allardice said in a release. "It reinforces our belief that there is a significant opportunity and appetite to grow the game in our strategic growth markets including the USA, so more fans can enjoy it, more kids are inspired by it and sponsors and broadcasters want to be a part of it."
In the UK, viewership for the India-Pakistan match grew by 60 percent on Sky UK whereas the overall viewership for the market went up by 7 per cent.
In Pakistan, the event was being broadcast by three players for the first time namely PTV, ARY and Ten Sports, which led to further growth in viewership by 7.3 per cent compared to the 2016 edition of the event.
In Australia, the viewership increased by 175 percent on the Fox Network. In the USA, which the ICC recently named as one of the focus markets for the sport, the tournament was the most viewed cricket tournament ever on ESPN+.
The ICC's partnership with Facebook was a driver for the significant increase in video views, with a total of 4.3 billion views across all channels for the tournament, compared to 3.6 billion views which were garnered for the 2019 edition of the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup.
The consumption across digital assets also grew, recording a total of 2.55 billion minutes. ICC's social media channels also saw significant growth in the engagement at 618 million across those platforms, which is a 28 per cent jump since the 2019 edition of the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup.
