ICC Men's Cricket World Cup digital content delivers record-breaking numbers

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LONDON: The International Cricket Council on Wednesday released the final digital content viewing figures for the recently concluded ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 confirming the event’s position as one of the world’s most-watched sporting events.

Relevant and engaging match and non-match day content ensured record-breaking levels of fan engagement across ICC digital platforms and social media channels. Video content across ICC digital platforms delivered over 3.5 billion views with a further 1 billion views coming via ICC’s official digital clips licensees.

The event also saw record numbers on Twitter and Instagram with a number of videos reaching more than 3 million views. The official ICC YouTube channel saw 2.3 billion minutes of tournament content viewed. Whilst on Facebook, there were over 1.2 billion minutes of content watched over 10 billion impressions and over 68 million engagements.

ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said, “The growth in consumption along with these record-breaking numbers demonstrates the power of cricket to bring together an enormous global audience as well as the increasing appetite of fans to engage with more than just match day content.''

“The ICC’s focus on fan engagement, both in terms of deepening existing fan interaction with the sport and bringing new fans to the game has been driven by data and analytics.”

The most-watched video on ICC’s Twitter page was one of India captain Virat Kohli requesting Indian fans to show more respect to Australia batsman Steve Smith, an incident captured during a break between overs.

The #CWC19 conversation generated 31 million Tweets from 20th May to 15th July. A comparison of the official hashtag #CWC19 to last time’s #CWC15 showed more than a 100% growth in tweet volume.

India-Pakistan matches are a top draw in ICC events and so it was no surprise that the most-tweeted match was their league encounter at Old Trafford, the figure of 2.9 million tweets making it the biggest ODI ever on Twitter. The second-most tweeted match was the final between England and New Zealand with the India-New Zealand semifinal coming in third.

On social media, 14 million new followers were added across ICC and CWC channels and over 22,000 pieces of content were posted through the event. The ICC social media channels garnered 481 million engagements across channels with Instagram providing over 60% of engagements.

Three separate posts crossed over 1 million engagements out of which two were hugely popular bespoke picture graphics commissioned by the ICC.

There were 75 million unique users on the ICC website and app with 272 million page views of the official event website. More than 41 million fantasy teams were created throughout the event on the ICC app.

The official ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup tournament mobile app reached the number one position for sports apps in both the App Store and Google Play Store in various countries on numerous occasions throughout the event. This peaked on 2 June, when it was number one in seven countries in the Google Play Store and in 14 countries on the App Store.

Aarti Dabas, ICC Head of Media Rights and Digital said, “Fans want to be closer to the action and immersed in the sport. That means highlights, analysis, behind-the-scenes team, fan and player content, news, statistics - all of these and more are now the expectation, not the unique or the differentiation.

“Throughout the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019, we have used insight to deliver a wide variety of content that brings more fans closer to the game. An outstanding planning process was complemented by an agile team during the event. This enabled us to anticipate and respond to the demands of cricket’s one billion-plus fans around the world and make this World Cup the most digitally consumed ever.”