KOLKATA: What does India love to watch? Cricket, especially the Indian Premier League (IPL) which continues to remain top of the chart. Despite being suspended mid-way due to a surge in Covid-19 cases, the 14th edition of the league managed to create new viewership records.

With 11.2 billion minutes, the MI-CSK game on … became the most-watched IPL mid-season match ever (in BARC history). This match also became the most-watched match of the entire season. This is in addition to IPL 2021 surpassing the overall reach of 367 million versus 357 million in 2020.

Mumbai Indians (MI) had pulled off a nail-biting win, which was also their fourth victory of the season as they beat table-toppers Chennai Super Kings (CSK) by four wickets at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi.

The growth in numbers is a testament to the faithful fan following that IPL enjoys and the continuous effort by Star and Disney to innovate and grow the league each year.

Star India network garnered a cumulative reach of 352 million in the first 26 matches of IPL 2021 compared to 349 million in the corresponding number of matches in IPL 2020 (Source – BARC TG: 2+U+R).

The opening match between defending champions Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore also received a tremendous response, bigger than opening matches of all other IPL editions held previously other than Dream11 IPL 2020 and 42 per cent higher than the edition in 2019.