03 November,2021 08:47 PM IST | Mumbai | BrandMedia
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Cricket is the most popular sport in India, and the IPL is our biggest domestic cricket tournament.
It is, therefore, no surprise that the IPL comes in as the most popular cricket event in India by quite a stretch.
In fact, the IPL 2021 edition had a whopping 450 million TV viewers.
Now, those viewer numbers are from all over the world, but it's probably safe to say that a substantial majority of the 450 million viewers were watching the games from right here in India.
The total number of minutes watched during the IPL 2021 was 255 billion. This number refers to the total amount of time spent by the 450 million viewers watching the various different IPL matches.
The Indian betting informational site known as MyBetting also registered far more visitors on their website during IPL than during the T20 tournament.
The site received around 5 times more visitors during the opening night of the IPL 2021 compared to the opening of the T20 cricket world cup.
MyBetting.in gets the bulk of their visitors from India, so if their statistics are representative of the popularity of IPL versus T20 in India, then the IPL is about 5 times more popular in India than the T20 world cup.
But although the IPL is more popular in India, how does it look if we widen the scope and look at the global popularity?
If we put the global lens on, then it's probably no surprise that the T20 cricket world cup is much bigger than the IPL around the world.
There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that the T20 tournament is a global tournament involving teams from more than 16 cricket-loving nations.
On the other hand, the IPL is a domestic Indian tournament. Although it does involve some of the biggest cricket players in the world from both India and abroad, the tournament doesn't have the same kind of international appeal.
So what is the total number of T20 world cup viewers? The answer is 509 million cricket viewers worldwide.
These 509 million cricket fans watched a total of 822 billion minutes of T20 matches, more than three times as much as the IPL number on a global scale.
With that said, the T20 cricket world cup is also very popular here in India.
As an example, more than 1 billion people watched the T20 match between India and Pakistan (mainly domestic viewers from those two countries).
However, the number of Indians watching the other T20 matches where the Men in Blue are not involved is obviously lower.
Therefore, the conclusion of this article must be that the T20 is a bigger tournament on a global scale of popularity, while the IPL is more popular here in India.
