BBL 2020-21 registers record viewership; becomes most-watched tournament in league history

The recently-concluded tenth edition of the Big Bash League -BBL was the most-watched tournament in league’s history, Cricket Australia reported on Monday. The latest edition of Australia’s premier T20 tournament came to an end on Saturday with the final between Sydney Sixers and Perth Scorchers at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).

According to the release by Cricket Australia, an average audience of over 1.4 million watched the Sixers beat the Scorchers to win back-to-back BBL titles across Seven, Foxtel and streaming services including Kayo. That represented a 15% increase on the BBL 2019/20 season Final and ranked as the fourth most watched BBL game ever.

The recently-concluded final reached 2.5 million viewers on Seven and 669,000 on Foxtel, capping an extraordinary season in which as players, officials, staff and broadcast partners successfully navigated through the many challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Talking about the game, the Sixers beat the Perth-based outfit by 27 runs to retain their title. Riding on James Vince’s 95-run knock, the Sixers scored 188 for 6 before restricting the Scorchers to 161 for 9.

Record viewership for BBL 2020-21

As far as the viewership for the entire tournament is concerned, a total of 41.17 million viewers watched it, up by 1.4 per cent from the ninth edition of  BBL. The addition of the streaming figures to that tally makes BBL 2020/21 season the most watched since the competition expanded to a full home-and-away season three years ago, and the most viewed Big Bash tournament ever.

Alongside the record viewership numbers, more than 500,000 people attended matches in person during the tournament which makes up for a very impressive number at a time when the crowd restriction norms were in place across Australia due to the pandemic. Cricket Australia’s Head of Big Bash Leagues, Alistair Dobson, expressed his delight over the success of the tournament and said the record numbers reflect the passion Australians have for the BBL.

“The KFC BBL has the best fans in the country and we are grateful to the record number of Australians who tuned in to watch our tenth season. Bringing joy to our fans was the driving force for everyone across the league and clubs all season and we thank every one of them, whether they watched on TV or a device, listened on radio or attended at the stadium. We trust they enjoyed the incredible action on display in KFC BBL|10 and we can’t wait to welcome them back next season, hopefully in a more relaxed public health environment,” said Dobson.