India garnered 468 mn unique visitors for online sports in March 2021

With nearly 468 million unique visitors in March 2021, India possesses the largest audience in absolute terms in the Asia Pacific region, according to a Comscore blog. Indonesia is a distant second with over 122 million unique visitors, while Japan is placed third with nearly 89 million unique visitors.

However, in relative terms, Australia stands out, with over half (54%) of its digital population consuming sports-related content in the first quarter of 2021. In comparison, in India, 21% of the digital population consumed sports-related content in Q1 2021.

The Comscore blog further states that in countries such as India, where the population tends to be younger, so too are the sports audiences. Data for India shows that younger age groups tend to be larger in absolute terms. Moreover, a greater proportion of the younger audiences consume sports-related content relative to older audiences: 34% of India’s digital population aged 15 to 24 accessed online sports content, compared with 22% for the segment aged 35+.

In terms of gender, the male audience is much larger – both in absolute terms (91.2 million unique visitors in India, compared with 35.8 for the female audience), and in relative terms (33% of the male digital population in India accessed sports content, compared with 19% for the female digital population.)

In India, Cricbuzz is the top sports entity, while Yahoo Sports tops in countries like Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong.

In April 2020, the time spent on sports-related content dropped dramatically, as the world went into lockdown and events were cancelled. However, the trend in 2021 is clearly upward, and with popular events scheduled for the summer of 2021, time spent on sports-related content is expected to be back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of Q2 2021.