As World Cup viewership climbs, Gracenote’s Phanimohan Kalagara decodes Cricket’s expanding viewing journey

On the opening night of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026, as India began its title defence with a win over the USA, millions watched the chase unfold across television screens, mobile devices and connected TVs. By the end of the day, JioStar reported 14.7 billion minutes of consumption across digital and linear platforms, a 59% jump over the previous edition. Digital reach for India’s first match surged 98% compared to the 2024 opener, while TV ratings rose 41%. The tournament did not just begin with a win on the field. It opened with a statement about how sport is now consumed in India.

The momentum has only gathered pace. The India-Pakistan clash drew 163 million in digital reach and clocked 20 billion minutes of watch time across screens, with connected TV reach 2.4 times higher than the corresponding fixture in the last edition. Stadiums have been packed, but so have lock screens, timelines and streaming apps. As India sealed its semi-final berth with a tense chase against West Indies at Wankhede, brands responded in real time, pushing creatives within minutes of the final ball. Cricket, once centred around a single broadcast, now spills across platforms and into commerce journeys.

It is against this backdrop that Phanimohan Kalagara, CTO, Gracenote, a Nielsen company, joins the conversation. For Kalagara, live matches still anchor sports consumption. But the idea that the live telecast is the whole story no longer holds. 

Engagement today stretches before and after the game through previews, analysis, highlights and short clips that travel across social feeds and OTT libraries. He points to the 2023 men’s Cricket World Cup, which crossed one trillion global live-viewing minutes, while also generating 16.9 billion video views across digital clips and short-form content. Fans are not replacing live viewing. They are layering it.

Data reflects this shift. Gracenote’s tracking shows streaming platforms increased sports programming in SVOD catalogues by 52% year on year, signalling that sport is being treated as a broader content category that includes recaps, documentaries and related storytelling. 

Kalagara shares that a fan may watch a match live on CTV, revisit a key over through highlights on mobile, and later tune into analysis on an OTT app. 

Reports show that nine out of ten fans scroll on their phones while watching a match on TV, and one in two seek content even in idle moments on lock screens and ambient TVs. Attention, in this environment, moves rather than disappears.

In this interview, Kalagara speaks about why contextual viewing signals such as tournament stage, team affinity and the type of content watched are becoming more meaningful than time spent alone, and how second-screen behaviour should be read as active engagement rather than distraction. He also discusses the role of content discovery, the importance of tagging and metadata in helping platforms surface the right moments, and what this means for advertisers trying to reach fans who no longer follow a single linear path from toss to trophy.

Edited Excerpts:

With the ICC World Cup driving massive viewership, how is sports consumption today split across live matches, highlights, analysis and short-form content on CTV and OTT—and what does this shift tell us about changing viewer behaviour?

Massive viewership for events like the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup illustrates how live matches still anchor sports content consumption. But engagement today extends far beyond the live broadcast. Viewing journeys increasingly include “shoulder” content, such as game previews, post-match analysis, documentaries, and highlights that sit around the live event. This content gives casual viewers and avid fans opportunities to engage more deeply with sports across OTT platforms.

This reflects audiences’ layered viewing behaviour. Rather than replacing live viewing, short-form clips and analysis act as entry points that attract new or casual viewers while keeping core fans connected between games. For example, the 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup crossed 1 trillion global live-viewing minutes, while digital engagement exploded, with 16.9 billion video views across clips, social, and short-form content. This shows how audiences are supplementing live viewing with snackable formats rather than replacing it entirely.

Overall, the split today is less about replacing live matches and more about layering viewing modes.Fans watch marquee moments live, catch up through highlights and analysis, and engage with short-form content throughout the tournament cycle. It reflects a more fragmented yet deeper engagement model, where audiences move fluidly across devices, formats, and time windows rather than consuming sports as a single, uninterrupted broadcast. Gracenote’s Data Hub insights also reinforce why this ecosystem is expanding. Streaming platforms increased sports programming by 52% across SVOD catalogues year-over-year, underlining the role of sports not just as live tentpole content but as a broader content category that includes highlights, recaps and related storytelling.

What kinds of viewing signals are becoming more meaningful today (time spent, repeat viewing, or the type of content consumed), and why do these matter for understanding audiences?

When viewing fragments across platforms and formats, the signals that matter most are shifting beyond simple reach or total time spent toward a deeper understanding of what audiences are watching and how they engage with specific types of content. While metrics like time spent and repeat viewing still indicate loyalty, they increasingly need to be considered alongside contextual signals such as program genre, type, and the moment within a piece of content, because these factors reveal intent rather than just exposure.

For example, repeat viewing of highlights or post-match analysis can signal deeper fandom or interest in specific teams or narratives, while shorter viewing bursts around key moments may reflect more casual engagement. This is where content intelligence becomes important.

As libraries expand, effective content discovery capabilities making it easy for viewers to engage with related titles are becoming just as important as duration-based metrics. 

These signals matter because audiences today rarely follow a single linear viewing path. A fan might watch a live match on CTV, revisit key moments through highlights on mobile, and engage with analysis later on OTT. Looking at content type alongside engagement patterns provides a more nuanced picture of audience behaviour. This helps the industry move from measuring passive viewing to understanding active choices and interests.

Sports is often seen as a single, mass audience. In reality, how does content intelligence help break viewership into more nuanced audience segments?

Sport is often viewed as a single, mass-reach environment, but behaviour is far more layered once you look at the types of content people choose and how they engage with live events. Fans don’t just watch “sports”, they follow specific leagues, teams, athletes, storylines or even match moments, and those choices reveal very different levels of attention; from casual viewers who tune in for highlights to deeply engaged fans who watch analysis, shoulder programming or niche competitions. Looking beyond broad reach to understand these patterns helps the industry move from treating sports audiences as one block to recognising multiple engagement opportunities.

This is where content intelligence becomes important. By analysing attributes such as sport type, tournament stage, team affinity, or whether someone is watching live matches versus recaps or documentaries, platforms can build more nuanced audience segments rooted in level of engagement rather than demographics alone. 

Instead of a single “cricket viewer” category, content intelligence can reveal clusters like stats-driven superfans, or casual audiences drawn in by major tournaments. That level of nuance matters not just for personalisation and content discovery, but also for advertisers and broadcasters seeking to align messaging with specific viewing contexts and mindsets rather than assuming every sports viewer behaves the same way or has the same level of passion for what they’re watching.

As sports viewing increasingly shifts to CTV and commands premium ad pricing during events like the World Cup, how does deeper content understanding help brands decide where their ads appear, ensure suitability across match moments, and reduce wasted impressions?

As more sports viewing moves to CTV and major tournaments command premium ad pricing, brands are placing greater emphasis on understanding not just who is watching, but what content their ads appear alongside. Deeper content intelligence allows advertisers to move beyond broad “sports inventory” and make decisions based on the context of a match, whether it is a high-intensity knockout game, a pre-match analysis show, or highlight programming. That level of nuance helps brands align messaging with the tone and relevance of content and even specific viewing moments, rather than relying only on audience scale.

Contextual signals such as league, team, tournament stage or even the type of program surrounding the live event help ensure brand suitability, especially during emotionally charged or unpredictable match moments. 

The deeper understanding of content environments helps reduce wasted impressions by ensuring ads are placed in contexts that match brand objectives instead of being spread broadly across all sports programming.

As the economics of CTV continue to evolve, this shift toward content-level intelligence is becoming more important for both performance and accountability. Brands can optimise spend by focusing on moments that drive higher engagement or relevance, while broadcasters and platforms benefit from more transparent ad placement strategies that balance premium pricing with contextual precision.

With growing privacy constraints, how important is contextual intelligence in helping advertisers reach relevant audiences without relying on personal data?

As privacy expectations evolve and signal loss reshapes digital advertising, contextual intelligence is becoming increasingly important because it allows brands to reach relevant audiences based on what people are watching rather than who they are.

Instead of relying on personal identifiers, advertisers can use signals like genre, program type, live versus shoulder content, or even the tone of a specific sports moment to align messaging with viewer intent.

This reflects a broader industry move toward privacy-safe context-based targeting, where relevance comes from the content environment rather than personal data.

Contextual intelligence and Content Discovery built on structured metadata are helping make this transition practical. Gracenote Content Connect, for instance, gives agencies and brands an understanding of the attributes of programming at a granular level, enabling advertisers to place campaigns within suitable content environments without depending on personal profiles. This approach helps brands maintain scale while adapting to tighter privacy standards, especially in CTV, where deterministic user data is often limited.

Live event viewing often involves second-screen behaviour, with viewers switching between devices during matches. How does this affect how advertisers should think about attention and engagement on CTV?

Live sports increasingly unfold across multiple screens, with viewers checking stats, social feeds or highlights on mobile while the main broadcast plays on CTV. Rather than seeing this as fragmented attention, advertisers are beginning to view second-screen behaviour as a signal of deeper engagement, where audiences actively interact with the event ecosystem instead of passively watching. This shift means success is less about capturing uninterrupted attention and more about aligning with key moments that prompt interaction, such as big plays, analysis breaks or post-match conversations.

For advertisers, this changes how engagement on CTV should be evaluated. High-impact formats placed around decisive match moments or premium live inventory may drive stronger recall even if viewers briefly glance at another device. Contextual intelligence becomes important here because understanding the type of content, whether it is live action, highlights or studio analysis, helps brands align messaging with moments when viewers are most attentive or emotionally invested. Gracenote’s content intelligence frameworks, for example, help platforms map live sports alongside related programming, supporting both contextual ad placement and more seamless content discovery as audiences move between formats during a match.

Ultimately, second-screen behaviour suggests that attention is becoming more fluid rather than weaker. Advertisers need to think about engagement as a cross-platform journey, where CTV provides the primary shared viewing experience while mobile and social interactions amplify discovery, reinforce messaging and extend the lifecycle of sports content beyond the live broadcast.

From a global perspective, are you seeing differences in how markets like India approach sports-led CTV advertising compared to more mature CTV markets?

From a global perspective, markets like India are approaching sports-led CTV advertising with slightly different priorities compared to Western CTV ecosystems. In markets such as the US or parts of Europe, CTV strategies are often built around advanced programmatic buying, audience segmentation and cross-platform measurement maturity.

In India, however, the rapid growth of streaming is being driven first by scale, major sporting events and hybrid monetisation models, where free or ad-supported live sports act as a primary driver of CTV adoption before more sophisticated targeting layers fully evolve.

That said, the gap is narrowing quickly. As large cricket tournaments shift audiences toward connected screens, Indian advertisers are increasingly exploring contextual and program-level signals to balance reach with relevance, especially during premium match moments. 

The key difference is less about capability and more about the maturity of use cases. More mature CTV markets tend to optimise campaigns around advanced attribution and automation, while India is still scaling foundational elements such as cross-platform measurement and contextual buying around sports events. However, because India’s growth is happening in a digital-first environment, many advertisers are leapfrogging directly into contextual, content-driven strategies rather than replicating the older linear TV buying models seen in other regions.

For marketers planning campaigns around large sporting events, what are the most common blind spots when it comes to CTV and sports advertising today?

One of the most common blind spots for marketers planning around large sporting events is treating sports as a single block of premium inventory rather than recognising the diversity of formats and viewing contexts that exist within it. Many campaigns still focus heavily on reach during live matches. This overlooks valuable shoulder programming, highlights, and analysis content that often sustain engagement before and after the game. Without understanding how audiences move through content discovery journeys across these formats, brands risk missing moments where viewers are highly attentive, but inventory is less saturated.

Another challenge is relying too heavily on broad app or platform targeting instead of looking at program-level signals. Not all sports environments carry the same tone or viewer behaviour, and contextual intelligence has become more important for ensuring suitability, especially during emotionally charged or unpredictable match moments. 

Many brands underestimate how fragmented sports rights and streaming platforms have become.

Without a clear view of where specific leagues or tournaments live, campaigns can become inefficient, highlighting the growing need for structured content intelligence that supports both planning and content discovery across an increasingly complex sports ecosystem.