Twitter and Sony Pictures Networks India have collaborated to bring premium coverage of the Indian cricket team’s Sri Lanka and England tours to the microblogging platform. In a first, users in India will be able to experience cricket video content on their Twitter timeline with in-match and powerplay highlights. The coverage includes India vs. Sri Lanka series starting July 18 as well as India vs England series starting August 4.

The sports channels of Sony Pictures Networks’ (@SonySportsIndia) will provide live coverage of the tours on Twitter. This includes match highlights, Man of the Match clips, as well as audience-favourites such as the best catches of the match. These video highlights, as well as Twitter Moments, will be available for fans across various cricket formats.

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Amrita Tripathi, who leads global content partnerships for Twitter in India, said, “While the sports experience has changed in recent times, the roar of sports fans on Twitter is louder than ever. Conversations around cricket leagues in 2020 increased by 23 per cent when compared to those in 2019 - which in itself was a record-breaker with 27 million Tweets.”

“We are delighted to partner with Sony to bring in-match premium cricket video content to people on Twitter in India for the very first time, building on a promising content partnership with one of the top sports broadcasters in the region,” added Tripathi.

Manish Aggarwal, Head – Growth and Monetisation, Digital Business, Sony Pictures Networks India said, “We are excited to partner with Twitter and take our viewer engagement to the next level. It is a pleasure to come together and be able to reach out to cricket enthusiasts with video highlights. Since it is a new and refreshing phenomenon, the viewers will now have one more platform to share/discuss and express their views on the matches.”

The partnership with Sony Pictures Network India will also offer brands to amplify their ads via pre-rolls with this premium content. Publisher partnerships on the platform can be leveraged by brands with Twitter Amplify.

More cricket content from partners

According to recent research by Twitter, 69 per cent of all people on Twitter in India classify themselves as cricket fans and 30 per cent of people describe themselves as huge fans. As much as 51 per cent of cricket fans on Twitter read posts about matches, players, news reports; this season, 25 per cent of fans plan to engage with Tweets during the match and 31 per cent of fans plan to watch videos and 25 per cent of fans want to follow the teams on the service.

Through the course of this year, the microblogging platform will bring a range of different cricket content from partners, like the sports channels of Sony Pictures Networks India, including its social audio rooms Twitter Spaces and behind the scenes action with the Twitter #BlueRoom for the upcoming World Cup series and India vs. Australia women’s series, it said.

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