India-Pak World Cup match records 229 mn viewers in India

An India-Pakistan cricket clash has always managed to cause maximum impact and this time it wasn’t any different. Though frequent rain acted as a spoilsport, the Indo-Pak face-off  in the ICC World Cup 2019 recorded 229 million viewers (BARC India, All India 2+) tuning in to watch the live match coverage on Star Network and Doordarshan. The match registered 67 million impressions. 

Barring DD viewership, Star India, an official broadcaster of ICC World Cup 2019, recorded a viewership of 206 million for the match. The tournament has seen 367 million viewers tuning into Star Network from across India with television viewership delivering a record 303 million average impressions for the first three weeks.

According to BARC India data, 60% of all World Cup viewers tuned into the India-Pakistan match. In comparison, 45% viewership of all India World Cup matches was from the India-Pakistan match.

Following the excitement around India-Pak matches, advertisers had gone all out to buy ad inventories of Star Sports channels, which were priced at almost Rs 25 lakh per 10 seconds. The channel was selling other matches for Rs 10-Rs 15 lakh per 10 seconds.

In order to build excitement before the India-Pak match, Star had shot a special segment for Philips Hue Cricket Live with Bollywood star Ranveer Singh. Singh visited Old Trafford – the iconic venue for India’s game against Pakistan — and interacted with cricketing legends such as Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Brian Lara and Ramiz Raja, along with anchor presenter Jatin Sapru.

The India matches played at World Cup attracted 321 million viewership with 150 million impressions whereas all the matches played at World Cup 2019 registered 381 million viewership and 311 million impressions.

Among India-Pak matches played in other series, the clash of the ICC Final 2017 recorded 268 million viewers whereas the match played at Asia Cup 2019 registered 127 million viewership.

Star India’s digital platform Hotstar recorded 100 million active users and a concurrency of 15.6 million, the highest ever in an ODI match, during India-Pak match in the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup 2019. The platform witnessed 66% reach from towns beyond the big metros.

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