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With about 288 million viewers, the ICC World Cup 2015 match between India and Pakistan on February 15 was the second-most viewed match in cricketing history, according to TAM data. So far, the highest number of viewers has been recorded by the final match of the 2011 World Cup, played between India and Sri Lanka (340 million viewers).
The India-Pakistan match was rated 11.9 TVR (TAM data M15+ ABC) on the STAR network and 2.9 TVR on Doordarshan. For the six metros, the rating was 17.2 TVR, while for smaller cities and towns, it was 15.5 TVR.
STAR India's launch of four new regional feeds (Bengali, Tamil Malayalam and Kannada) for the World Cup played an important role. While the feed in Hindi and regional languages accounted for 76 per cent of the viewership, English accounted for the rest.
The match also created another record - with 25 million video views on STAR India's Hotstar and STAR Sports platforms, it became the most viewed sports event on the digital platform (mobile and personal computers), much higher than the US Super Bowl or any game of the Wimbledon tennis championship and the FIFA World Cup.
Uday Shankar, chief executive of STAR India, said, "Nothing is bigger than the ICC Cricket World Cup and Indian fans have shown their unflinching faith and passionate following for Team India, as the team began its World Cup campaign with a bang."
The India-Pakistan match also created a buzz in the social media, with 324,000 users generating 500,000 conversations about the match, with about three billion impressions. The match dominated conversations on Twitter, with 10/10 trends on Twitter Web, and 15/15 trends on Twitter Mobile.
#Indwins was used 90,000 times, starting well before the game ended. The STAR Sports campaign, #wontgiveitback, saw 24,000 hits, while the second instalment of the 'Mauka Mauka' campaign was viewed half a million times within hours of its release. A disruptive 'Mauka' campaign went viral, with about 17 million views online.
