Bumper weekend sees record Digital, TV ratings

The return of men's international cricket to Australia and the climax of the Rebel WBBL season has seen CA Digital reach record-breaking heights in recent days while Foxtel, the subscription television service, set a new record for cricket viewers. 

CA's digital products – powered by HCL – welcomed 3.2m users across web and app over the weekend, as cricket fans kept up to speed with all the dramatic action as Australia took an unassailable 2-0 lead over India in the men's Dettol ODI Series and the Sydney Thunder clinched their second WBBL title.

Living up to its billing as The Home of Highlights, there were more than 3.5m video views across CA's digital products, more than 1m of which were in Australia.

Globally, an astonishing 52m video views were recorded across all of CA Digital's platforms and social media channels.

The Vodafone Match Centre kept cricket fans informed throughout, attracting 13m screen views across app and web, with almost 90 per cent of the consumption in Australia.

The CA Live app alone recorded 16m screen views across the three games, with the average user spending eight minutes consuming scores, news, video highlights and live streams.

And in an Asia-Pacific first, CA Digital collaborated with Google and WSC to provide in-running match highlights of the men's ODIs via the Google Web Stories feature.

Users worldwide who googled the game were instantly served video highlights of all the key moments in a mobile-friendly format via Google's OneBox.

CA Digital's results came as Foxtel reported record ratings for the first two matches of the Dettol ODI Series, with a combined audience of 585,000 for the second ODI across the Fox Cricket set-top box service and Foxtel Go, Foxtel Now and Kayo digital subscribers.

Foxtel reported it to be "the highest rating ODI ever on subscription television and the third most-watched sports program on STV of all time".

Foxtel's previous record for an ODI was the 2015 World Cup Final when Australia beat New Zealand at the MCG, a match that was also broadcast on the Nine Network. The free-to-air broadcast of that match attracted 2.2m metro viewers, according to figures reported in March 2015.

The Rebel WBBL broadcast was reported to have 321,000 people tune in on the Seven Network's 7Mate channel, while 131,000 people watched across the Foxtel platforms, including Kayo.

That set a new record for the most-watched WBBL match on subscription TV, and represented a 24 per cent increase on subscription viewers from the WBBL|05 Final.