With an astounding 1.28 crore concurrent viewers on October 24, Sunday, Hotstar set a new record. The high-pressure game was won in style by Pakistan by 10 wickets, but that did not dampen the emotions of Indian spectators. It’s the greatest live viewership of any sporting event in the country, shattering all prior records.
The high point came in the 17th over, when India captain Virat Kohli was three runs short of a half-century. The online streaming site Hotstar had its largest live tune ever with 1.2 lakh viewers watching IND versus PAK Live at the same time.
Earlier this month, the second leg of the Indian Premier League 2021, which began on September 19 in the United Arab Emirates, showed a sharp dip in ratings and viewership when compared to the first leg’s average ratings. However, as the second leg progressed, the online streaming network was able to get back on track.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has released the following information about the 2019 World Cup viewership:
With a global cumulative average audience of 1.6 billion for live coverage, a 38 percent increase over the 2015 edition and a unique broadcast audience of 706 million viewers, the tournament was the most-watched ICC event ever, demonstrating the phenomenal reach and power of live cricket around the world.
India and its millions of cricket fans had a significant role in this increase. The encounter between India and Pakistan, as expected, became the most important match of the tournament. It translated into figures of 273 million unique TV viewers and further 50 million digital-only viewers.
With 25.3 million viewers, India vs. New Zealand semi-final match set a new world record for the highest ever concurrent viewership of a live stream – but keep in mind that most of those viewers were watching the LIVE Stream for free because Hotstar at the time allowed users to watch 5 minutes of live streaming for free. 28 crore of the 1.28 crore concurrent viewers on India vs Pakistan were paid, viewers.
