Increase of 26% on 2020 comes amid 44% increase globally to 192m
The ICC has revealed that the 2023 Women’s T20 World Cup reached 192 million live viewing hours globally, with 6.9 million of those coming from the UK.
This is a 44% and 26% increase respectively on the 2020 tournament, and makes it the most watched Women’s T20 World Cup to date. England was knocked out at semi-final stage by host nation South Africa - with the South Africans’ run to the final inspired a 790% increase in viewing in the country.
In addition, India saw a 57% increase on 2020 despite the team not making it to the final this time round. The most popular game in the country was its group stage match against Pakistan, which reached 32.8 million live viewing hours across the Star Sports network and Disney+ Hotstar.
There was also growth online, with the ICC’s digital channels acheiving an uplift of 26% more video views across all channels with the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2023 achieving 1.39 billion video views compared to 1.1 billion for the 2020 edition in Australia.
The ICC website and app had 12.5 million unique users during the tournament, an increase of 20% on the 50 over 2022 World Cup in New Zealand. The site and app had a number of new innovations for the tournament, including VR ShotTracker, where fans could see an augmented replay of every six, a vertical video feed including in-game and match highlights from every game, and a number of in stadia activations for fans in attendance.
The ICC’s partnership with Meta also yielded new content, with three Instagram content creators producing non-traditional pieces for the ICC’s channels, that included a singalong with the entire Indian cricket team, comedy skits involving players (in Hindi) and female empowerment pieces celebrating the participants of the event. The content series generated more than 344 million video views for only 14 individual Reels.
ICC chief executive Geoff Allardice said: “The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2023 broadcast and digital numbers are another example of the excellent progress that is being made to accelerate the growth of women’s cricket. As a strategic priority for the sport we are working hard to engage fans and new audiences with our ICC Women’s events.
“For what was a game-changing event for women’s cricket in South Africa with some exciting and competitive cricket, there was also increased engagement numbers in other key markets in India and the UK which is very pleasing to see. The approach to digital innovation for ICC Women’s events has also seen an uplift in fans engagement with the World Cup and our focus is to continue to provide audiences engaging content throughout the year to fulfill that growing demand.”
Image: ICC
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