The Hundred “a game changer” for women’s cricket.

The Hundred attracts more live viewers than the Netball World Cup, Women’s T20 World Cup and Women’s Six Nations. 

7.05m viewers tuned in to watch women’s matches live throughout the tournament, 24% of the overall viewership across the 64-match competition.

1,081,000 viewers tuned in live on the BBC and Sky Sports to watch the opening women’s game between Oval Invincibles and Manchester Originals – a record for any women’s cricket match in the UK.

Free-to-air coverage on the BBC has been a key driver to the overall growth in viewership

The Women’s Hundred Final on Sunday saw twice as many viewers tune in to watch compared to the 2020/21 Women’s Big Bash League Final.

The Hundred attracted a higher share of female viewers (34%), than the number of female viewers who watched the Men’s T20 Blast and England’s opening two Test matches vs India earlier this month.

Nielsen Sports, the global leader in sports industry analytics, has today revealed that The Hundred attracted more live viewers than several major international competitions including the Netball World Cup in 2019, Women’s T20 World Cup in 2020 and Women’s Six Nations in 2019.

The data also shows that of the 26.3 million cumulative live viewers that tuned in to watch both men’s and women’s matches across the 64-match tournament, 7.05 million watched women’s games.

Additionally, the opening game of the women’s tournament between the Oval Invincibles and Manchester Originals attracted the highest audience for a women’s cricket match in the UK of all time with 1,081,000 combined viewers tuning in on BBC and Sky Sports.

In becoming the first women’s domestic cricket competition to be broadcast on free-to-air (FTA) television, the addition of live coverage on the BBC has been crucial to the tournament’s overall success. Of the one million viewers who tuned in to watch the opening game between the Invincibles and the Originals, 900,000 watched it on the BBC, further outlining the power the broadcaster has in drawing in audiences.

To add to that, FTA coverage on the BBC has been a key driver of the overall growth in viewership, with 40% of the total women’s audience share coming from people tuning in to watch games televised live on the BBC – despite it only airing six of the 32 matches.

Meanwhile, in terms of the overall live viewership demographic for The Hundred, 66% were male and 34% were female. However, when compared to other competition demographics for the T20 Blast and England’s opening two Test matches against India, the 34% female audience share that tuned in to watch The Hundred is significantly higher than both of those events, which attracted 23% and 26% female audience shares respectively.

The previously heralded leading women’s domestic cricket competition, the Women’s Big Bash League in Australia, had 428,801 viewers for the 2021 final competition. In comparison, the women’s Hundred final on Saturday at Lords attracted more than double the number of viewers with 958,400 tuning in and a peak audience of 1.49 million.

Lynsey Douglas, Head of Brands at Nielsen Sports, said “The Hundred has been a great success for Women’s Cricket in attracting a large TV audience, this is likely to increase the fanbase for Women’s Cricket at both the domestic and international level and have an impact on participation. It’s positive to see a new competition set up with sponsorship, broadcast and ticketing covering both genders.”

For more information about Nielsen Sports visit www.nielsensports.com

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