VBS 2026
Google India’s Shubha Pai highlights evolving cricket fandom and ‘180-day cricket strategy’ for brands at VBS 2026
Data says only 40 per cent of cricket consumption is live while catch-up searches are six times higher
Mumbai: Cricket marketing in India must evolve beyond the few hours of live match broadcasts and instead capture a continuous 180-day engagement cycle driven by digital fandom, according to Shubha Pai, Head – Brand Solutions at Google India, who presented the keynote titled “Game Beyond the Game: Winning 180 Days of Cricket.”
Delivering the keynote, Pai argued that brands need to rethink their media strategies as cricket consumption shifts from traditional television viewing to a multi-screen, always-on digital ecosystem anchored by platforms like YouTube.
Pai said cricket fandom today is characterised by scale, emotion and engagement, with a continuous cycle of interaction around the sport. According to data cited in the presentation, India has around 50 crore cricket fans.
Research also shows that 90 per cent of viewers are active on another screen while watching live sport, indicating widespread second-screen behaviour among fans.
Growth of digital cricket consumption
Pai highlighted significant growth in digital cricket content consumption on Youtube.
Data shared during the keynote showed that views on cricket content on Youtube increased from about 50 billion between July 2023 and June 2024 to around 190 billion in 2025.
Cricket consumption today differs from how audiences consumed the sport in the 1990s and early 2000s, with digital platforms playing a larger role in how fans engage with cricket-related content.
Changing patterns of cricket content consumption
Cricket fans now follow a broader set of activities throughout the day. These include:
- Catching up on the previous day’s match
- Scrolling through cricket-related content
- Streaming matches
- Searching for upcoming match information
- Watching post-match analysis
- Viewing archived clips and highlights
The presented data indicated that 40 per cent of time spent consuming cricket content is live, while 60 per cent is non-live content.
Search behaviour also reflects this trend: search intent to “catch up” on cricket content is six times higher than searches related to watching or streaming live matches.
Advertising visibility challenges during IPL
Pai highlighted a “visibility gap” for brands during the cricket season.
Many advertisers rely on 10-second or 15-second ad formats, which can make it difficult to include storytelling, brand building or explanations of complex value propositions.
The presentation also referenced Barc data from April–June 2025, indicating that while IPL broadcasts can reach large audiences overall, the effective reach for individual brand campaigns can be significantly lower.
Marketing playbook for the cricket season
Pai outlined a set of strategies described as a “Winning Playbook” for cricket marketing.
One example highlighted campaigns from IPL 2025, where advertisements uploaded five to ten days before the start of the tournament gained significant traction online before the first match began.
She also recommended combining short-form and long-form video formats.
YouTube Shorts was highlighted as a key platform for reach, with over 650 million monthly logged-in users in India as of June 2025.
Growth of connected TV and full-funnel campaigns
The keynote also pointed to the growth of connected television viewing.YouTube cricket video views on connected TV screens in India grew 65 percent year-over-year.
Pai also shared examples of brand outcomes from campaigns during the IPL period:
- Swiggy achieved 3.5 times incremental return on ad spend and two times higher conversion rates through brand campaigns.
- Poco India recorded 137 per cent better performance compared with live sports placements using a full-funnel strategy on YouTube.
Creator collaborations and new content formats
Pai also encouraged brands to explore creating original intellectual properties with YouTube creators, using collaborations with digital creators to produce cricket-related content and engage audiences beyond live match broadcasts.
