After an uneventful first week’s action in the ICC World Cup, the tournament steamed up with a major upset in which England was upset by little-known Ireland yesterday. The match saw peak viewership ratings on television at 3.96 TVR — the highest after the tied India-England match on Sunday.
According to aMap, television audience measurement agency, the England–Ireland match which initially had virtually no viewership, saw cricket lovers coming back in droves in the last hour, during which Kevin O’Brien scored the fastest century in the World Cup off just 50 balls. After which the minnows defeating their much-fancied neighbour with just five balls to spare. The television ratings went up from 1.21 to hit 3.96 when the match concluded.
This rating is the second highest in this World Cup. The India-England match played last Sunday witnessed the peak of 9.62 TVR. Viewership of the India-England match also touched record levels with as many as 50.7 million people tuning into ESPN, Star Sports and Star Cricket channels on Sunday. Another 33.7 million viewers watched the match on Doordarshan, which is free-to-air and available across the country. Moreover, the match drew as many as 1.45 million video streams on www.espnstar.com/cwclive.
The average rating for the India-England match stood at 6.44 points, which comes close to the highest of 7.3 TVR posted in the Chennai Super Kings-Mumbai Indians match during the third season of the Indian Premier League (IPL-3) last year.
The England-Ireland match had reached 19.6 million viewers. But it was not aired on Doordarshan as the public sector broadcaster has the rights to telecast only 10 World Cup matches, including the four quarter-finals, the two semi-finals and the final.
ESPN Software India Executive Vice-President (Ad Sales & New Media) Sanjay Kailash, said, “The ratings for non-India matches are very healthy and point towards increasing viewer interest in the tournament.” Data with ESPN Star Sports (ESS) show the first 10 matches have registered average ratings of 3.1 TVR (the rating has been arrived at by TAM).
ESS which is the official broadcaster has also agreed to sell advertisements for DD and has assured Doordarshan a minimum of Rs 32 crore in ad revenue for the tournament. Industry sources estimate ESS garner as much as Rs 750 crore in ad revenue. The World Cup has returned to the sub-continent after 15 years. The tournament will see 49 matches being played in venues across India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.