Cricket ratings on TV

Regan at Throng blogs:

In 2011, when New Zealand made the semi finals of the Cricket World Cup, the average audience on Sky Sport per match that the Black Caps played in was only 67,930 viewers. The highest average audience was 79,530 between New Zealand and Zimbabwe.

In 2015, the Cricket World Cup is in New Zealand and the Black Caps matches are screening on both Sky and their FTA channel, Prime. The opening match between NZ and Sri Lanka had an average audience of 161,280 viewers on Sky and another 145,940 viewers on Prime.

The difference in average audience between the last 2 years is quite considerable.

That’s a huge growth from 2011.

Back in 1995 (we couldn’t go back any further without someone logging hours in physical paper journals), the most watched match was between New Zealand and Pakistan on the 17th of December. The average audience for that game, was a staggering 602,950 viewers.

Further more, that equated to 19.3% of the entire population of 3.1million viewers.

In the 1980s (and to a degree the 1990s), cricket was massively watched on TV. We’re regaining some of the viewers of the past, but I guess today fewer people are just watching TV overall.