World Cup Match Analysis Story: Everything costs. Nothing is free. Often people use this philosophy, this dialogue. The matter is correct and wrong – because whatever is, it is a matter of all attitude. Some scientists even say that time is only one view, one is a person. There is no cost of time. Either it is priceless or without value.
The Mahakumbh of Cricket i.e. the World Cup has just been completed. India lost in the final. One and a half billion countrymen are inconsolable. This is the case. So much efforted, Diwali crackers were saved, they had prepared messages of cheering. The tickets were spent by spending thousands of rupees and reached the final stadium after struggling. Cricket is our life. We have kept the God of cricket, we have even installed idols. We have handed over how many hours of our life to cricket. So it is made to be inconsolable.
The final match lasted for some eight hours – Ii 480 minutes. One lakh spectators sat at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad for eight hours. That is, eight lakh hours were collectively spent in the stadium itself. Eight lakh hours means 4 crore 80 lakh minutes! Thinking causes dizziness. There are 8,765 hours in a year – so it has been equal to about ten years. That is, two general elections were settled.
But the picture is still left. The cricket stadium runs less and more on your mobile-TV. Only five and a half crore people were contributing their eight hours on Disney-Hotstar. More than six crore people were gathering on Star Sports on TV. When adding OTT and cable TV viewers, about 100 million people watched the match in the final. 10 million people and eight-eight hours-ie 80 million hours! That means 91,000 years! Think – Travel from the world era to artificial intelligence, just between 2 pm and 10 pm!
Cricket is precious. Takes thousands of crores of crores of crores of people. That is why thousands of crores of rupees are made in one match. Every second advertisement, Paste people on the players’ jersey, banners in the stadium – all of them enter the mind of people through crores of eyes and ears.
Although the audience shed tears on India’s defeat, the media is entangled in the analysis of necklaces, but the organizations and companies running this game are very happy. The price of crores of crores of people spent crores of hours has been recovered. On the other side of the door, thousands of thousand crores of rupees were earned and distributed.
This time the World Cup, small and big brands spent about 20 billion rupees on advertisement. Advertising up to Rs 2,200 crore, including both TV and digital platforms, is estimated to be earned. Digital earnings were at least 70% more than last time. Digital advertising rates increased by more than 60% for the 2023 World Cup. Advertising expenses on TV increased 20% and in matches like India -Pakistan, the rate of 10 seconds reached about 30 lakh rupees.
After all, why so much money? The answer is clear – a population of two and a half Arabs, which has a loveless love from cricket. Cricket enthusiasts booked rooms in hospitals when they did not find a place in hotels in Ahmedabad. Many lovers stayed in cities, 100 km like Vadodara. When the number of finalists on Disney-Hotstar reached six crores, then understand what cricket matters to us. During this time, how much mobile companies must have earned by selling internet data – it is difficult to guess.
The truth is that when crores of people watch cricket, they do not just watch cricket. They also see fifty types of advertisements. TV screens, stadiums, players’ clothes and their equipment – advertisements are glued. Products are sold under the guise of cricket. The public is so lover that three-three thousand tickets buy in black in fifty thousand. Now tickets are also sold through online management companies, not the Babu of the stadium.
The money in cricket is so much that America and Saudi Arabia are also adopting it. In America where the “A” of cricket was never known, the T20 World Cup was held in 2024. Sharjah had understood the value of cricket long ago. Now Saudi Arabia is buying a stake in the IPL and investing in it.
This interest is not to create sportsmanship or explain the importance of sports. The focus is cricket-lover of developing countries like India-Pakistan-Bangladesh. They buy tickets, buy products by seeing advertisements and spend hours for cricket for hours. And this makes earnings from this. The viewer gets “nain happiness”, while the showers are filled with pockets.
Cricket will still spread. China is also a member of the ICC. And China knows how to earn. So it has to be seen when this game spread there. Once cricket was a hobby game – the hobby of English, which was played for Tafrih. But now both cricket and tafarih are contrary to each other. Cricket is now billions of dollars of industry. The reason is clear – the developing world is adopting this game.
The global circus of cricket i.e. IPL is now priced at $ 2.99 billion. BCCI is the richest cricket board in the world. It was not always rich – its deficit in 1992 was $ 1,50,000. Today, BCCI has an estimated annual revenue +2 billion dollars. This is followed by the revenue of ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) +368 million, and Cricket Australia’s +270 million dollars.
BCCI: Estimated annual revenue $ 2.1 billion (2025) – world’s richest board. IPL valuation: increased to $ 11 billion (2025), which is above $ 10.9 billion in 2023. TV and Digital Advertising: Total Estimated Earnings ₹ 2,500 Crore+in 2024-25 seasons, ₹ 2,500 crore+, in which digital growth fastest. It is a glut of South Asian people in Britain and Australia.
The result is clear – Khel is no longer a thing of physical or brain health. Now it is a means to make money. The rich are already rich, not compared to them. But lower and middle class have no money and have a lot of time. And this is the game. Every time is a game of time – who could understand, he is a player; The one who did not understand is clumsy.
(Originally published on 20.11.2023. Revised again in September 2025.)
