The 2025 Anderson-Tendulkar trophy will be remembered for a long time to come. The drama, the results and the cricket had fans hooked to their television sets, according to live TV audience data sourced by YouGov Sport.
Twenty-five days of cricket, with each match going into the fifth day, ensured that the series aggregated high viewership – higher than the 2021/22 series between England and India. The volume and quality of cricket meant there were few bumps in between, and while fatigue became a factor for the players involved, the fans continued to tune in.
As is the often case with stats in Test cricket, the data hides some devil in the details, which makes comparisons as the ones above slightly convoluted. The first Test in the 2021 series was a rain-curtailed event that saw the game finish in premature draw, including a rained-out Day 5.
Test 5 of the series was played 10 months later, in July 2022, after being postponed due to a Covid outbreak in the visitors’ ranks. The Test was a great spectacle, but a standalone one, with the narrative of the series plausibly having faded since.
For a fairer comparison between the two series, audiences for Tests 2, 3 & 4 over the first four days (because not all matches in the previous series went into the last day) will give us a better sense of how invested the nation was with the series.
Test 2 in both the series ended in an unfavourable result for the English team. While in 2025, the test was a run-fest starring Shubman Gill, the corresponding Test in the preceding series ended with India picking up 10 English wickets in the last two sessions on day five after then captain Virat Kohli encouraged his bowlers to “unleash hell”.
Test 2 this year was also competing for attention in the busiest sports weekend for the UK. Combining that with an unfavourable result meant the second test struggled to live up to its potential. In fact, it was the worst performing match in terms of average audience per day, after the rain-washed first Test of the 2021/22 series.
The second test of the series at Edgbaston also had the lowest Share % of the five matches this series for the data we tracked on Sky Sport Cricket, averaging 3.96% for the five days. Share % is the percentage of households that is exposed to the content, measured against the total number of households who were watching television at that specific time.
While Tests 3 and 4 outperformed this time around, it was not all good news. Tracking viewership for the 16-24 age group, audiences fail to live up to the standards set in 2021/22, dropping 42% for Tests 2-4, averaging less than 6000 audiences per day, compared to more than 10 thousand in the 2021/22 series.
The trendline was a lot more encouraging for the 25-34 cohort, with viewership more than doubling for Tests 2-4.
The England Test Cricket Buzz scores from SportsIndex reveal an interesting trend when comparing the 2021/22 and 2025 series. As the matches progressed, the 2025 series experienced a steady and significant rise in Buzz scores, indicating growing excitement and engagement among fans. In contrast, the 2021/22 series maintained a relatively flat Buzz score trajectory, suggesting a plateau in public enthusiasm.
Despite a recent resurgence in popularity, particularly under the entertaining “Bazball” era, England’s Test cricket remains heavily dependent on an ageing fanbase. Data from UK Profiles shows that over 40% of cricket fans in the UK are aged 65 or older. This is backed by the underwhelming contribution to cumulative viewership by those aged 16-24 for the 2025 series.
This demographic skew poses a challenge for the long-term sustainability of the sport, especially as media consumption habits and entertainment preferences shift dramatically among younger audiences.
The Hundred was meant to address this specific imbalance. The format’s shorter games, vibrant branding, and family-friendly atmosphere has attracted a younger audience. YouGov Profiles shows us that an impressive 31% of The Hundred’s fanbase is aged 18-44, compared to just 24% of total cricket fans in this same bracket[UP8] . But despite the over-indexing among younger age groups, The Hundred in 2025 has not found itself doing significantly better when trying to pull the youngest to the TV screens. Meanwhile, it is seemingly less popular across the 25-34 aged cohort, per the audience viewership metrics.
Overall, while cricket remains a popular sport in the UK, the authorities will hope for their efforts to bring in younger customers pay off sooner rather than later.
