Hotstar, the OTT service from Indian pay-television broadcaster Star, had a record 100 million daily active users on June 16, the day of the India v Pakistan Cricket World Cup game.
NDTV reports that Hotstar’s stream of the game achieved a peak of 15.6 million concurrent views, which the service said was its record for a one-day international cricket game. In May, Hotstar reported a record peak concurrent viewership of 18.6 million, during the Indian Premier League final between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings.
The International Cricket Council said the World Cup “is on track to shatter previous digital and TV records”. It has delivered more than 1 billion views of digital content on ICC’s own platforms and social media channels. These platforms include the official ICC CWC 2019 website and mobile app, and ICC channels on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. The content that has generated the most views has included India v Pakistan, Liton Das’s back-to-back sixes for Bangladesh against the West Indies, and India captain Virat Kohli’s request that fans show respect for opponent Steve Smith.
The ICC also reported that UK pay-television broadcaster Sky’s coverage of the tournament had reached 6 million viewers in total so far. The broadcaster achieved an average audience of 821,000 for its coverage of the India v Pakistan game, making it one of its most-watched cricket games ever.
ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said: “The positive trends that we are seeing around the number of fans engaged at this stage of the tournament gives us great confidence that all previous records will be shattered.”