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9.02 million Viewers in India Tuned in to Watch 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup Final

India and Australia played the final in front of 86,174 fans at the MCG on International Women’s Day.

australia women cricket team photo

Australia won a record-extending fifth world T20 title (© ICC)

The final of the 2020 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia was watched by a whopping 9.02 million fans in India. India made the final of the biennial tournament unbeaten but lost to defending champions and hosts Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground last month.

The two teams played in front of 86,174 fans at the MCG on International Women’s Day.

That figure alone was much higher than all the matches of the 2018 edition in West Indies and a massive 154 per cent higher than the second-most watched contest of the competition – that too the tournament opener between India and Australia on February 21, the ICC said in a media release on Thursday.

The overall viewing minutes also registered a big growth – 5.4 billion which is almost thrice the 2018 edition.

Overall, the event  became one of the most watched women’s sporting events in history.

“ICC’s digital channels were in overdrive during the 21 February to 8 March event in Australia, with an astonishing 1.1 billion total video views, making it the most watched ICC women’s event ever and the second most successful ICC event after the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019,” the statement read.

“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 Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2017,” it added.

As India made the final of the event for the first time, fans watched 1.78 billion viewing minutes of live match action on TV of that game alone. The figure is 59 times more than the final of the previous edition in 2018 between Australia and England, and comprised 35 per cent of the overall viewership for the tournament.

In Australia, the average audience for the final was 1.2 million, making it the most watched women’s cricket match and the sixth-most watched cricket match ever on subscription television in Australian broadcast history.

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