Across the 2025–26 Summer of Cricket, Seven reached 16.8 million Australians through Seven and 7plus Sport, delivering its highest December share ever, its strongest January start on record, and a BVOD surge that turned cricket into one of the country’s most valuable live-streamed properties.
The headline numbers are big: 49.5% commercial share in December, a 45% total TV share year-to-date, and 7plus leading BVOD at 44.3%, but the deeper story is more nuanced.
Cricket still commands national attention. It just now lives across two screens, two habits, and two different kinds of fandom: the appointment-viewing, couch-bound traditionalist and the mobile, on-the-go, Gen Z and family viewer who lives inside 7plus.
As Seven’s National Television Sales Director Katie Finney told Mediaweek, “it’s the same we see with our linear and our 7plus audiences as well” – with some viewers moving fluidly between both, and a growing cohort who now exist entirely inside streaming.
“We also have a huge exclusive 7plus-only audience that may not actually have traditional linear television,” she said, watching instead via connected TVs, desktops and mobiles, “and that’s how they consume all of their television.”
Katie Finney
Two games, two audiences – one big cricket economy
That audience split is just as clear between Test cricket and the Big Bash League.
The Ashes remains Seven’s premium mass-reach machine, delivering 14.2 million viewers across Seven and 7plus Sport, with average audiences up 12% year-on-year and live streaming minutes soaring 113% to 1.51 billion.
But the BBL is doing something different, and arguably more culturally interesting, pulling families, kids, and first-time cricket fans into the tent.
Seven’s National Sport Sales Director Rob Maclean told Mediaweek the BBL’s evolution has been deliberate.
“We came out of Covid and worked with Cricket Australia to optimise the format, making it shorter while still fitting neatly within the school holiday period. And ever since that point, over the past three or four years, the trajectory has been one of growth, year on year.
“And all of that leads to a very broad-appeal product. One that not only appeals to, I guess, cricket traditionalists, but one that appeals to families and to younger kids and first-time entrants,” he explained.
That shows up in the data.
BBL|15 reached 12.4 million Australians, with streaming reach up 77% and live streaming minutes doubling. Gen Z viewing on the BBL’s Stream of Rights is up more than 100% year-on-year.
“You add to that the introduction of the Stream of Rights last summer, which continues into this year, and we’ve seen a significant surge in our Gen Z audience. They’re up over 100% from last year,” Maclean said.
For Seven, the trick is no longer choosing between tradition and innovation – it’s selling both in a single summer-long package.
Rob Maclean
Where live TV meets live streaming
That dual-screen reality is fast becoming one of cricket’s most powerful commercial weapons.
Finney says making the game live and free across Seven and 7plus has fundamentally shifted who can watch – and how.
“The fact that last summer was the first time that you could stream it live and free on 7plus, and that’s only grown,” she said, with viewing up 103% year on year as people watch on phones, at work, or while second-screening on their computers.
The result, she added, is a game that now follows Australians wherever summer takes them: “we can give viewers the cricket at any time, anywhere… in that live environment,” pulling in “more and more new viewers, including younger Gen Z.”
The result is a rare thing in modern media: total television growth, driven by streaming, around live sport.
Maclean calls it the perfect storm for brands.
“What we’re seeing this summer continues a strong trend of total television growth, led by streaming, in the year prior. We think that live sport arguably has never been more important to not only Australians who want to consume it but to brands who want to be a part of it and build their own brand story within that environment.”
Why brands still trust cricket
For advertisers, cricket’s value isn’t just about reach – it’s about safety, tone and context.
As Finney puts it, “this is a very safe, family-friendly sport,” backed by what she says is the strong culture Cricket Australia has built across its teams.
That trust is amplified by the rhythm of the season itself, which stretches from “those key retail periods with Black Friday, through the lead up to Christmas, all the way through Boxing Day, and then into that Jan and back to school.”
For brands, she said, that creates rare consistency, allowing them to “have different peaks and messaging, and talk to audiences across many buying cycles and mindsets during that period.”
Maclean says the BBL and Test cricket allow brands to speak in different voices to different viewers – without sacrificing scale.
“The BBL is more of a family game; it’s more playful, so it lends itself to brands that are willing to have fun and be playful in their tone and style. But also, there is a different audience there, and that’s why we constantly encourage the market to look at how the two combine to deliver a maximum reach outcome, because there is a crossover audience, but if Big Bash, for instance, is bought in conjunction with Test cricket, it adds about 40% incremental reach.”
In-play, in culture, in conversation
Seven’s cricket proposition is no longer just about what happens between balls. It’s about turning moments into culture.
“It truly has a national footprint and the ability to capture the nation’s attention, and we lean into and embrace that in our storytelling,” Maclean said.
For brands, that extends into the broadcast itself.
“You’ve got the consistency of our in-play outbreaks at the end of every over, which just brands love,” Maclean said.
“But there’s also lots of time and space out of play as well to inject sponsored content or to be a part of the storytelling. Cricket just offers so many different ways, combined with that longevity across a good part of summer.”
Finney says that the combination of scale and speed is what sets live sport apart.
“There’s no other place that you can get the scale and reach and that high-velocity reach than in live sport,” she said, adding that it also satisfies something deeper in the audience. “People want to come together and have a shared interest and be part of those cultural moments together as well. Sport does that.”
The bottom line
Cricket hasn’t shrunk. It’s stretched – across screens, generations and formats – and Seven has positioned itself right at the centre of that shift.
With the Women’s International Series against India still to come, and BVOD growth accelerating, Seven’s Summer of Cricket isn’t just a content strategy anymore.
It’s a full-stack media engine – one that brings tradition and streaming, families and Gen Z, brands and culture into the same long, loud, very Australian conversation.
About the Author
