Cricket is a very popular sport, played all around the world, though it is more popular in certain countries. Check out cricket popularity.
Popularity of Cricket Around the World.
Cricket is most popular, based on online searches for that term, in India. Indians are very passionate about their cricket, and the search traffic numbers are helped by their very large population too.
It is clear how well the game of cricket spread to the countries colonized by the English.
Here we use online search traffic for the term ‘cricket’ to analyze which countries it is more popular.
| Ranking | Country | Regional Popularity* |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 100 |
| 2 | Pakistan | 70 |
| 3 | Sri Lanka | 68 |
| 4 | Bangladesh | 42 |
| 5 | Australia | 32 |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates | 30 |
| 7 | Nepal | 28 |
| 8 | Trinidad and Tobago | 26 |
| 9 | South Africa | 24 |
| 10 | New Zealand | 22 |
* Regional Popularity is a relative term (proportional to the most popular term and related to the popularity of other terms in each region), and does not represent an actual number of searches.
Although there are only around 4,200 professional cricketers in the world, it is estimated that the game is actually played by around 30 million registered players, with the vast majority of these playing in Asia.
The truth, however, is that cricket is actually a very popular sport and this is mainly because of where this sport is popular. Based on search traffic, the top five countries that look up the word cricket the most are Australia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India.
True enough, India has the biggest cricket tournament held annually which is the Indian Premier League (IPL). The IPL is estimated to have around 105 million unique viewers during its last season. This year, it has an average viewership of over 116 million.
Cricket fans have plenty to watch each year aside from the IPL. They would also flock to The Hundred cricket betting sites whenever it is on. The World Cup is also something they look forward to watching and wagering on. The global cricket calendar simply has so many series for them to look forward to.
When it comes to cricket’s popularity, it’s simply hard not to talk about how big this sport is in India. We can say that India plays a big role in cricket’s popularity as this country has one of the biggest numbers of the population worldwide. Even if it isn’t India’s national sport, the nation simply loves it and this country already gives cricket millions of viewers.
BARC reports that around 93 percent of sports viewers in the country would watch cricket. According to the ICC as well, India constitutes around 90 percent of the one billion fans of this sport. The country’s love for this sport is also evident by seeing cricket clinics all scattered all over the country.
India has also produced big names in the cricket industry like Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly who is now the head of the Board of Cricket Control in India or the BCCI.