How cricket can attract & engage new audiences

The summer of 1938 marked The BBC’s first cricket broadcast, and indeed, the first cricket match broadcast on television anywhere in the world. The crew worked diligently to set up the infrastructure for this momentous occasion and share it with those lucky enough to have access to a television set.

Fast forward to the summer of 2023, when the Men’s Cricket World Cup recorded over a trillion viewing minutes, capturing every angle of play and every moment of action. Digital coverage added 23% to traditional live linear TV viewership, with 177 billion live viewing minutes consumed via streaming platforms. On social media, fans from all countries engaged with the tournament, inundating platform feeds with user-generated analysis of gameplay and an interactive two-way commentary.

Keeping up with Gen Z

Whilst cricket can be a religion for fans in some nations, champions of the sport have been working hard to ensure its image stays relevant for a younger fanbase. Creating lifelong advocates from new viewers is not just about broadcasting the game, but also about offering a dynamic, interactive, and personalised experience. The key to success lies in understanding the evolving preferences of a youth audience and adapting to meet their expectations.

Broadcasters of all long-form sport need to optimise their multi-platform strategies, and explore supplementary content for social media in order to ensure matches reach a wider audience. The cricket community should be sharing continuously throughout a tournament, and in the right format, to truly maximise the value of its content. That means being the first to publish across multiple social platforms, all with different requirements, ratios, and optimal graphic overlay positioning.

Driven by Emotion

Connecting with GenZ audiences is all about emotion and adrenaline, combined with personalisation to add an extra layer of interactivity. To do this effectively, broadcasters need to create snapshots that get more eyes on the key-moments of play, using short-format videos which hold the interest of younger demographics. There are plenty of ‘heartbeat moments’ in a cricket match, but as attention spans shorten, there is a pressing need to identify and extract these from the trillions of minutes captured across a tournament.

Real-time engagement is a crucial factor, as GenZ thrives on immediacy and relevance. So there should be a focus on unique experiences showcasing customised content, which blends multiple highlights across different games with a focus on individual players. By offering tailored and theme-based content, it is also easier to incorporate sponsorship messages and brand overlays that will appeal to fans. Viewer participation via tappable and interactive stories, allows broadcasters to maintain engagement over a longer period of time and build more meaningful connections.

Automation in Real-time

Until recently, highlight reels and snapshots were an afterthought, and broadcasters missed the opportunity to connect with fans in real-time simply because the scale of the editing task was too daunting. However, new technologies are enabling much faster turnarounds on short-form content, allowing broadcasters to deliver next-level storytelling and support the mission to find new cricket fans. In a typical Indian Premier League season, with 74 matches and approximately 14,000 hours of play generated, manually logging these videos can be a tedious process. With AI tools, however, this footage can be processed in real-time. In the 2022 season alone, smart solutions led to the creation of almost 3500 social media stories

AI video tagging and ML content production workflows can deliver digital-ready video highlights in a fraction of the time that traditional editing takes. Automation tools have revolutionised content creation, allowing broadcasters to quickly and easily distribute match highlights at scale and optimise engagement. Smart content creation using facial recognition, video repurposing, and metadata extraction is by no means a replacement for editors though. It simply reduces the turnaround pressure, allowing them to effortlessly extract key moments so they can add a touch of human creativity with customisation, overlays, and graphics.

Social media engagement transforms traditional one-way sports broadcasting into continuous dialogue with fans. By getting the most out of these platforms, broadcasters can capture the hearts and minds of a youth audience and ensure a bright future for cricket in a digital age.

Vinayak Shrivastav is CEO and co-founder of Magnifi by VideoVerse