ICC Women's T20 World Cup
ICC Women's T20 World Cup (Source: Twitter)

The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Thursday revealed record digital and broadcast viewing figures for this year’s ICC Women’s T20 World Cup. The tournament was hosted by Australia and was a huge hit. The competition has in fact become one of the most-watched women’s sporting events in history.

The tournament ended on a dream note for the hosts as they thrashed high-flying India to lift the title. And while all the teams were competing for the top prize, ICC’s digital channels were in overdrive and eventually had an astonishing 1.1 billion total video views. Consequently, this year’s Women’s T20 World Cup has become the most-watched ICC women’s event ever and the second most successful ICC event after the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019.

The figure was more than 20 times the video views delivered in the previous edition played in the West Indies in 2018 and 10 times the previous most successful women’s cricket event, which was the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2017. The broadcasters also had a dream time as the final achieved record viewership in both India and Australia.

ICC Women's T20 World Cup, Australia, India, Melbourne, Women's T20 Final
Women’s T20 World Cup final, Australia vs India (Source: Twitter)

Both the teams played in front of 86,174 fans at Melbourne Cricket Ground on International Women’s Day. With India playing their first-ever Women’s T20 World Cup final, fans watched 1.78 billion viewing minutes of live match action on TV of that game alone. The figure is 59 times more than the final of the previous edition in 2018 between Australia and England and comprised 35 percent of the overall viewership for the tournament.

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The live average audience for the final in India was 9.02 million. The figure is 154 percent higher than the second most-viewed match in the competition the tournament opener between Australia and India on 21 February. The overall viewing minutes across the whole event in India was 5.4 billion, almost three times more than the 2018 edition.

In Australia, the average audience for the final was 1.2 million, making it the most-watched women’s cricket match and the sixth-most watched cricket match ever on subscription television in Australian broadcast history.

“These quite outstanding broadcast and digital numbers demonstrate the power of women’s cricket to aggregate a huge global audience and engage fans. This undoubtedly consolidates our position as one of the leading women’s sports in the world and we want to build on the momentum from this event and create a long-term sustainable foundation for the game.

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,” said ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney.

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