The Women's T20 World Cup, between 21 February to 8 March created history by breaking all kinds of viewership records across TV and digital platforms for a women’s cricket event. The World Cup event recorded 1.1 billion video views including digital and broadcast viewing figures. With this it becomes second most-successful ICC event in history.
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It's official! The ICC Women’s #T20WorldCup 2020 is one of the most watched women’s sporting events in history.
Indian women’s cricket team made it to the final of the T20 World Cup for the first time, however, they lost to Australia in a dominating match. Interestingly, it recorded a big crowd cheering for the Harmanpreet Kaur-led team. A total of 9.02 million fans in India watched the tournament final which was also the most-watched women’s cricket match ever in Australia.
Key Takeaways:
The Women's T20 World Cup recorded 1.1 billion video views across ICC digital channels
The tournament final was the most-watched women’s cricket match ever in Australia
A total of 9.02 million fans in India watched the team take on Australia in the ICC World T20 final
The teams played in front of 86,174 fans at Melbourne Cricket Ground on International Women’s Day.
It was the most-watched ICC women’s event ever and the second most successful ICC event after the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019.
Crunching numbers
Comparing the viewership, the figure is 59 times more than the final of the previous edition in 2018 between Australia and England Women
It was more than 20 times the video views delivered in the previous edition played in the West Indies in 2018
Live audience in India was 9.02 million, higher than all matches of the 2018 tournament played in the West Indies
It was 10 times the previous most successful women’s cricket event, which was the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2017.
Roughly 86,174 fans came to the stadium at Melbourne Cricket Ground on International Women’s Day to watch the final
While India recorded a brilliant 5.4 billion total viewing minutes for the tournament, in Australia the average audience for the final was 1.2 million
It was the most watched women’s cricket match and the sixth-most watched cricket game ever on subscription television in Australian broadcast history
"It reinforces our belief that there is a significant opportunity around the women’s game and collectively we must promote it further so more fans can watch it, more kids are inspired by it and sponsors and broadcasters want to be a part of it," ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney was quoted saying.
The future of women’s cricket
After recording the stellar viewership numbers, ICC now is looking forward to make women’s tournament rights separate from the men’s game. The ICC is instigated to focus on women’s game exclusively. The discussion focused on the possibility of separating women’s cricket editions from men’s during the next cycle from 2023-2031.
Sawhney told the Telegraph “All of our data points over the last three years have shown us that fans are interested in women’s cricket. Our global market research shows that 70 per cent of our one billion plus fans want to see more women’s cricket.”
We hope this is a great encouragement for women's cricket and its fans across the world. We also hope that this will trigger a new thinking among cricket boards about ending the gender gap in cricket fees that women receive.
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