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The 2022 Women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand generated 1.64 billion total views across International Cricket Council (ICC) channels, making it the most engaged women’s event on record and the global governing body’s third overall.
Only the men’s 2019 Cricket World Cup and the 2021 men’s Twenty20 World Cup brought in more engagement from fans via the ICC’s official channels.
ICC content during the 2022 tournament saw a 45 per cent increase in engagement on the 2020 women’s T20 World Cup in 2020, which reached 1.1 billion views. The 2022 World Cup also generated more than 16 times the 100 million views from the last edition of the international competition, which took place in England in 2017.
Instagram Reels proved to be the fastest growing channel, as the most viewed video of Australian cricketer Jess Jonassen’s one-handed catch against England’s Katherine Brunt reached 13.5 million views alone.
The tournament brought in 164 million engagements, with that figure including shares, likes and comments across social media platforms throughout the competition. This doubles the 82 million engagements during 2020’s T20 World Cup in Australia.
Additionally, 10.3 million users accessed the competition’s owned digital platforms, a near three-fold increase on the 2020 tournament.
Female audiences continue to increase, with 22 per cent of the engaged users during the 2022 World Cup being female, in comparison with 20 per cent during the men’s T20 World Cup in 2021, and 13 per cent for the Women’s T20 World Cup in 2020.
The 2022 competition delivered a cumulative global dedicated TV audience of 104.8 million, while 82.8 million watched the tournament live on TV and digital platforms combined. The 215.2 million of total viewing hours for New Zealand 2022 were up 47.7 per cent on Australia 2020.
“We are absolutely delighted with the record-breaking digital fan engagement numbers of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022,” said Geoff Allardice, chief executive of the ICC.
“As a key strategic pillar to growing the game our focus has been deepening engagement with existing fans and bringing new audiences to the sport. The innovative approach to creating heroes in the women’s game and taking the sport closer to fans has resulted in world leading numbers.
“The competitive nature of the cricket and the excitement generated around the tournament has put us in a great position to continue to build on the success of this year’s event.
“With the focus now on providing fans with more engaging content throughout the 100 per cent Cricket Year of Women’s Cricket leading into the inaugural U19 and senior Women’s T20 World Cups in early 2023.”
