This year’s T20 World Cup will forever be remembered as the tournament which changed the perception of women’s cricket. Over 86,000 people packed the MCG earlier this March as Australia defended their T20 crown against India, but now television figures from BARC have confirmed that millions were watching all around the globe.
Broadcast Audience Research Council statistics show that the World Cup in total amassed over 5.3 billion viewing minutes and reached almost 75 million unique viewers in total. Women in India accounted for 39% of the viewing minutes, whilst little under 41 million unique viewers tuned in for Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney’s exploits on March 8th.
The data also outlined that the final was the most watched sporting event of the week in India, male or female, with a registered 1.88 billion viewing minutes. Interestingly, the final was actually watched more by men than women, with 1.1 billion viewing minutes compared to 0.8 respectively and a reach of 23.7 million compared to 17.3 million.
In Australia as well, the World Cup was an overwhelming success from a broadcasting perspective. The ICC announced that the tournament’s opening game was the second most watched women’s match in Australia, with a combined audience of 448,000 across all channels.
In terms of the viewing minutes for the first 12 games of the competition, there was a 213% rise in viewing minutes compared to the World Cup two years ago. This exemplifies how women’s cricket is on the rise and hopefully we’ll see this figure rise even more drastically by the time the next major tournament comes around.