Cricket remains top of the league for India’s sports broadcasters
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Rebecca Hawkes
| 04 June 2019

Cricket is still the prime mover when it comes to viewing sports in India with 93% of sports viewers tuning into cricket content in 2018, according to ratings agency BARC India.

In its new report called Cricket in India: It’s not just a game, the organisation shown that the audience for sports broadcasts in India had grown from 43 billion impressions in 2016 to 51 billion impressions in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9%. Of these, cricket accounted for 12.3 billion impressions in 2018, despite the absence of any men’s international tournaments in that year.

Although sports such as kabaddi, wrestling, and football are all gaining popularity, cricket

contributed 65% of viewership contributions year-on-year, said BARC. Overall, there was a 25% growth in the broadcast audience for cricket between 2016 and 2018.

Live cricket was watched predominantly by young people, with 35% of the 2019 audience share aged from 15 to 30. Women accounted for 48% of the total viewing figures last year, while the share of NCCS AB cricket viewers stood at 56% for the first 21 weeks of 2019.

The popularity of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has continued to grow, both in terms of viewers and of the average watch time per viewer, which rose from 28 minutes in 2016 to 34 minutes in 2018.While the Women’s World Cup Final between India and England drew 39 million impressions.

In total last year, Indian TV channels broadcast 89,000 hours of cricket content.

“The last three years have seen a steady increase in cricket content on sports channels. Apart from international cricket matches to the national favourite IPL, viewers today have a wide array of choice. From domestic competitions like the Ranji Trophy, the Duleep Trophy, the Vijaya Hazare Trophy etc to International T20 Leagues like Big Bash League, Mzansi Super League, Pakistan Super League, etc to popular celebrity leagues - we can see it all on the small screen,” the BARC India report said.