Australia’s trouncing of New Zealand in last night’s Cricket World Cup proved a boon for Channel Nine with Oztam figures showing the city metro audience reaching 2,223,000 during last night’s second innings – a record result for a game in Australia.
The Oztam figures showed the first session – where New Zealand batted, albeit not very well – reached an audience of 1,886,000. Nine has also reported that last night’s final has been the most watched TV program of 2015. A further 522,000 watched the second session on pay-TV channel Fox Sports 3, while 492,000 watched session one. The game was played in front of 93,013 – a record crowd for an Australian cricket game.
In a rather dour second stanza, arguably the only contentious part of the evening was the commentary of Shane Warne, who, to be honest, is never particularly erudite at the best of times. Post-match, “Warnie” wandered amongst the victorious Australian players and the only question he appeared able to muster was asking players how pissed they were going to get now they’d won the trophy.
“Are you feeling thirsty?” he asked a bemused Brad Haddin. “Are you going to have a bit of a drink tonight too Smitty?” he put to Steve Smith. While coach Darren Lehmann was asked: “So what’s the plan, besides lots of drink and that?”
Media intelligence agency Meltwater has also released this graphic of social media activity during the tournament.
Meanwhile, Facebook have crunched some numbers during this year’s tournament. It found that 3.7 million people had 9.3 million interactions on Facebook during last night’s final.
Globally there were 3.7 million people on Facebook for last night’s game with 9.3 million interactions.
Facebook’s data team also looked at the most mentioned player on each team. The two captains from last night – Michael Clarke and Brendon McCullum – were the two of most interest to social media enthusiasts.
Fans of both teams, including PM Tony Abbott, expressed their support on Facebook before and after the match:
Australian cricketer Dave Warner
Australian Socceroo Tim Cahill
Australian model Jesinta Campbell
From January 1 to the end of the tournament Facebook found 53 million people had more than 700 million interactions about the Cricket World Cup on the platform.
In Australia, 14 per cent of Monthly Active People (MAP) on Facebook have talked about the Cricket World Cup since January 1. In New Zealand, nearly 20 per cent of Monthly Active People on the platform have talked about the tournament since January 1.
