India-New Zealand most viewed match across all WTC series: ICC

The ICC World Test Championship (WTC) had a fitting finale as New Zealand beat India by eight wickets on June 23 in Southampton to cap off a memorable two years’ WTC cycle. The quality of cricket played was top-notch and it reflected in the viewership as well with a whopping 177 million watching the finale, as confirmed by the ICC on Wednesday (28 July).

 The live viewership of the marquee clash played between June 18 and 23 was watched and touched by 130.6 million across 89 territories. As usual, the Indian crowd contributed with the majority of the viewership with 94.6% of consumption on Star Sports and Doordarshan.

Apart from showing the match in customary English language, the matches were televised in local languages as well. Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada were the other languages where the match was aired live. 

ICC Chief Commercial Officer Anurag Dahiya said, "The viewership data for broadcast and digital coverage of the ICC World Test Championship Final presents a heartening picture, showing strong consumption across territories and languages as well as formats.

 New Zealand too was not too far behind as the fans and spectators were awake to catch the team win the epic final against India. Over 200,000 people witnessed the summit clash spanning six days and were treated to a good quality of cricket. Even in England, the viewership was brilliant as Sky Sports recorded the highest rank match for the two years WTC cycle for a match not involving host nation England.

Even the ICC’s OTT platform ICC.tv churned out good viewership as 665,100 live views from over 145 territories watched the WTC Final. The reserve day saw the most views ever recorded across the Facebook page of ICC with 65.7 million individual views across the 24-hour period, surpassing the 64.3 million during the final of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020.