MUMBAI: This year’s biggest sporting spectacle - the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 - has recorded an impressive opening with 101 million Indian viewers (TAM data CS4+ extrapolated to the universe using a standard conversion factor) tuning in on the first day of tournament that takes place once every four years. The inaugural day saw New Zealand vs Sri Lanka and England versus Australia face off in the opening stages for the Cup.

Approximately 67 per cent of the viewership for the opening day’s game, Australia versus England, came from Hindi plus vernacular feeds with English at 33 per cent. This reflects a shift as compared to the prior edition of the World Cup where English dominated with a 55 per cent share according to the network. The World Cup broadcast was bolstered by new look graphics and multi lingual feed (six languages).

The World Cup buzz renewed the Australia - England rivalry as viewers lined up to watch the co-hosts take on their arch rivals, irrespective of the time zone. The 9 am game delivered 2.5X of the ratings of the recently concluded Tri-Series and over ten times the viewership of any other Australia-England game, including day and night matches, in the last one year claims the network.

With nearly four million households having access to HD, Star Sports aired the games across a network of four HD channels including the newly launched Star Sports HD3, which is an all Hindi HD channel for sports.

The World Cup buzz also dominated social trends online with fans being vocal in their enthusiasm. The opening day witnessed 1,31,000 conversations from 80,000 unique authors delivering one billion impressions (in India) for the two matches.