With the men’s football World Cup running alongside, cricket’s showpiece is proving women’s sport can command crowds, screens and rights money
The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 opened in England last weekend with the strongest set of attendance, broadcast and digital figures the women’s game has logged, handing the sport’s commercial backers fresh evidence of its pull.
A combined 44,844 fans attended matches across the first three days, a record for the opening weekend of an ICC women’s event, surpassing the previous best of 34,680 set across the opening three days of last year’s 50-over World Cup.
The centrepiece was a sell-out crowd for India against Pakistan at Edgbaston, where 18,814 spectators made it the highest-attended group fixture in ICC women’s World Cup history, eclipsing the 15,935 who watched the same rivalry in Dubai in 2024.
The viewing data ran the same way. In India, the ICC reported a cumulative tournament reach of 215 million on JioStar‘s JioHotstar platform, with India’s win over Pakistan drawing 134 million digital viewers.
In the UK, Sky Sports said the opening weekend was the most-watched of any ICC women’s T20 tournament on record on its platforms, generating 3.3 million viewer hours, while the England–Sri Lanka opener averaged 393,000 viewers and peaked at 510,000 – a record average for the broadcaster at the event.
Across the ICC’s own channels, social content passed 753 million views, a 150% rise on the same point of the 2024 tournament.
ICC chief executive Sanjog Gupta said the start reflected “the growing power of the women’s cricket movement”.
It comes on the back of new UK government investment into three new cricket domes to grow the grassroots game.
A crowded summer, and the women’s game holds its ground
The figures land in a sporting calendar already congested with established men’s properties, including the FIFA World Cup in North America, which runs concurrently.
Women’s cricket is setting records in this crowded sporting calendar, which fits a wider theme documented by the Women’s Sport Trust (WST), whose latest visibility report found that UK television coverage of women’s sport generated a record 397 million viewing hours in 2025, beating a previous high of 384 million set in 2023.
More than 48 million people in the UK watched women’s sport across the year, the highest figure the charity has recorded, while female viewers reached a new high of 41% of the audience.
The WST also identified rising crossover between men’s and women’s audiences, with 55% of Women’s Super League viewers also watching the Premier League, up 12% year-on- year. On cricket specifically, the body recorded average audiences for the women’s Hundred up 26% year-on-year to 153,000.
The commercial case hardens
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) sold the Women’s Premier League‘s 2023–2027 media rights to Viacom18, now under JioStar, for INR 951 crore ($100.7m) – a per-match valuation the board said had never previously been registered for a women’s game. Sponsorship around the league has climbed steeply since, and franchise valuations have followed.
In England, the ECB has built its 2026 schedule around the same momentum, hosting the World Cup and staging the first women’s Test at Lord’s in July, alongside the return of The Hundred.
Sky has positioned the tournament as the opening act of its heaviest year of women’s sport coverage to date.
