ICC World Cup starts 2015 stint with 101 mn viewers

The bulk of the opening day viewership came from the Aus-Eng match

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The first two matches of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, being telecast on eight channels across the STAR India network, recorded 101 million Indian viewers (extrapolating TAM data, CS4+). The two matches, held on February 14, were played between New Zealand and Sri Lanka , and England and Australia. A total of 67 per cent of the viewership for the two matches was accounted for by Hindi and vernacular feeds, a shift from the previous edition of the World Cup, when English feed had a share of 55 per cent (for the entire tournament).

The bulk of the viewership was accounted for by the Australia-England match, telecast in six languages from 9.00 am on that day. The match saw 2.5 times the viewership of the recently concluded tri-series (in which India, Australia and England participated) and about 10 times the viewership of any other Australia-England game in the past year.

With about four million households having access to high-definition (HD), STAR Sports aired the games across four HD channels, including the recently launched STAR Sports HD3, India’s first all-Hindi HD channel for sports.

World Cup buzz also dominated social trends online. The opening day recorded 131,000 conversations on the event by 80,000 unique authors, delivering a billion impressions (in India).