Over 16m tune into The Hundred

The ECB has revealed that 16.1 million viewers watched ‘some of the action’ during the inaugural Hundred competition.

The finals, that saw Oval Invincibles winning the women’s tournament and the Southern Brave winning the men’s on Saturday, had an average of 1.4 million tuning in to the women’s final and 2.4 million for the men’s. The matches were broadcast across both the BBC and Sky Sports.

With one of the aims of the competition being to introduce new audiences to the game, the ECB will have been pleased to discover that 57% of viewers hadn’t watched any other ECB cricket this year. This was mirrored in the crowds at stadiums, with 19% of the 510,000 tickets sold being to for children, and 55% of ticket buyers having not bought a ticket for cricket in the UK before. 

There have also been more than 34.3m video views and 264,000 downloads of The Hundred app during the competition, and over 28,000 items of merchandise have been sold.

Bryan Henderson, director of cricket for Sky Sports, said: “At Sky, we are so proud of the role we have played in The Hundred, not just in terms of broadcasting and bringing the games to life for our viewers, but also our involvement in the development of the competition from day one through our partnership with the ECB.

“When we set out on this adventure with the ECB and the BBC, we knew the success of The Hundred would be measured by how much fans enjoyed and engaged with it and ultimately how many young people were inspired to pick up a bat and a ball.

“Today we can see this competition has already done so much for the sport. It has been a pleasure to watch it unfold and we very much look forward to planning year two.”

BBC Cricket executive producer Stephen Lyle added: “We are thrilled that so many tuned into our extensive TV, radio and online coverage of this brand new, innovative competition. Along with the ECB and Sky, it has been a pleasure to showcase the skill, drama, sights and sounds of The Hundred to fans and new audiences this summer. We are already looking forward to 2022.”

Image: Getty