Cricket related Content Consumption rises 230% ; Virat Kohli Most Popular Player

Consumption of Cricket-related content exceeded 0.75 billion on UCWeb Platforms - UC News and UC Browser, for the latest edition of IPL 2017 and the recently-concluded ICC Champions Trophy 2017. This is according to a data report, titled Insights into India’s Cricket Frenzy, released by UCWeb, a business within Alibaba Mobile Business Group. More than 50% of the country’s population logged on to the UCWeb platforms over the last 3 months for cricket scores and updates.

Cricket makes up for 68% of all sports-related content consumed on UC News. On a daily basis, over 3 million cricket fans checked into the UC Platform to consume cricket-related content, clocking in 7 million hours of cumulative content reading - a jump of 230% from last year. UC Platform saw maximum traction from the cities of Lucknow, Pune, Bhopal and Delhi and Mumbai. UC Cricket, a key component within UC Browser, was first introduced in 2013 to offer news and updates about cricket matches. It has now evolved to become a comprehensive cricket content platform. For the latest cricket season, UC News, content and news distribution platform of UCWeb, introduced a special section to offer comprehensive news and cricket-related content for the users.

The IPL Final was the most watched match of the IPL season with 21 million views and Kolkata Knight Riders emerged as the Most Popular Team of IPL 2017, followed by Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils. Captain of the National Cricket team, Virat Kohli remains the most popular player, clocking readership of over 32 million across 4600 articles. Rohit Sharma, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khar were the other top-read cricketers.

Commenting on the insights from the report, Young Li, Head of International Business Department, Alibaba Mobile Business Group said, “Cricket remains the most popular sport in India with mobile internet driving consumption of digital cricket content. UCWeb has been at the forefront of this change with its revamped UC Cricket and the UC News’ We-Media Blogger Program, a common platform that brings viewpoints from celebrities, bloggers, key influencers and the common man to a single place. This season, over 2000 We-Media writers posted 6,000 pieces of original cricket content on UC News, garnering total Page Views of over a billion.”

Last month, UC News ran an innovative IPL campaign “Match ki Kahaani, Celebs ki Zubaani” with #MasalaCommentary, bringing together multiple celebrities for app-based commentary on the IPL matches. UC News live streamed the chat and activities on its app, garnering a total of over 6.6 million views. Meanwhile, UC Browser is the sixth most downloaded application on Android platform in India with over 100 million Monthly Active Users.