MUMBAI: India’s top premium streaming platform Hotstar on Wednesday announced the airing of the 2019 ICC World Cup. Kicking off on 30 May in England, this season will follow the round-robin format which was last seen at the 1992 World Cup. This format will give cricket enthusiasts the exciting opportunity to see the most number of India matches during a World Cup. Hotstar has registered a 2x growth in viewership for ODIs since 2018.
Steadfast in its commitment of going wider and deeper across the country, the tournament will be streamed across 6 languages. This year, consumers in the US and Canada will also be able to catch all the action on Hotstar on the web (us.hotstar.com), Google play store, app store, as well as on living room devices like Roku TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Android TV, and Samsung Smart TV.
Furthermore, taking forward the success of the #KoiYaarNahiFar campaign for VIVO IPL 2019, the platform is retaining the social layer with the Watch ‘N Play feature, creating an unparalleled and engaging cricket-watching experience for all involved. Through Watch ‘N Play, Hotstar will bring people together irrespective of their location. Viewers will get the opportunity to invite their friends and family to the platforms, enabling them to watch the matches and play the Watch ‘N Play game together. The feature will allow viewers to make their voices heard by chatting about the match and share their Watch ‘N Play experience, not only with their friends and family, but also experts and celebrities.
Commenting on this, Hotstar chief product officer Varun Narang, said, “Our success in the IPL 2019 in terms of viewership and reach is a testament to the platform’s superior standard of live sports streaming. Over the years, Hotstar has constantly raised the bar of tech innovation, proving its mettle at handling the immense scale and traffic seamlessly. With the cricket behemoth, ICC World Cup 2019, on Hotstar, we aim to continue delivering an uninterrupted and immersive cricket watching experience not just to the domestic consumers, but to global audiences in the US and Canada as well.”
The recently concluded IPL was a record-breaking tournament for Hotstar, with the platform not only registering an excess of 300 million unique users but also witnessing a 74% increase in watch-time as compared to last year, further cementing its position as the home of digital sports viewing in India. Hotstar also broke its previous global concurrency records with 18.6 million concurrent viewership during the IPL 2019 finale. The season observed an overall 45% growth in viewership with some of the highest growth in viewership coming from cities like Coimbatore, Lucknow, Patna, Ranchi, and Salem.
Hotstar’s immense reach and scale makes it a preferred destination for advertisers across the country. Offering ad targeting for live sports at scale, the ICC World Cup 2019 on Hotstar will be an exciting affair for all involved. The streaming platform has announced Dream 11, Uber Eats, Amazon Pay and Coca Cola as the co-presenting sponsors this year, while the associate sponsors include Royal Challenge, Acko, CEAT, and ICICI Lombard.
