The success of the Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia has led the International Cricket Council to explore options of having separate broadcast rights for the 2023-31 women’s cricket cycle. With 1.1 billion video views, the World Cup in Australia was the most watched tournament in the history of the game.
The ICC Board is confident that there could be an opportunity where potential bidders could look at the women’s game separately for broadcast rights.
“It’s being explored although no decisions have been taken. But there’s potentially an opportunity there,” a senior ICC board member told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
“The big numbers we saw for audiences for women’s T20 means we must explore it. It has value,” he added.
The Indian market in women’s game is growing by the day and with the emergence of teen sensation Shafali Verma along with players like Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues, the ICC senses an opportunity.
“Exactly,” the veteran official said adding, “1.1bn video views make it our second most successful event ever behind men’s World Cup last summer.”
A whopping 9.02 million fans in India watched the final against Australia, even though the team lost the match at the historic MCG where a record 86,174 people were present. The ICC released a viewership data on Thursday which showed that there was a staggering 5.4 billion total viewing minutes for the tournament across India.
The figure was more than 20 times the video views delivered in the previous edition played in the West Indies in 2018 and 10 times the previous most successful women’s cricket event, which was the ICC World Cup in 2017 when India lost to England.
With PTI Inputs
