2019 Cricket World Cup said to have delivered £350million boost to UK economy

London was shown to have the greatest impact, with towards £65m of the final figure being generated in the capital. Results show Manchester and Birmingham accounting for £36.3m and £29.7m respectively

The 2019 Cricket World Cup is said to have generated a ‘total economic impact to the UK’ of £350million.

The analysis, which was carried out by The Sports Consultancy on behalf of the ICC, found that the competition generated ‘almost £350m of economic impact through additional money spent in the host economy by event visitors and organisers as well as business to business supplier contracts and broader consumer spend’.

London was shown to have the greatest impact, with towards £65m of the final figure being generated in the capital. Manchester and Birmingham are said to have accounted for £36.3m and £29.7m respectively.

The findings also claim that the tournament reached a global cumulative average audience of 1.6billion viewers, with digital video content bringing in over 4.6b views.

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ICC chief executive Manu Sawhney commented on the tournament’s success: “The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 was an outstanding success across all measures which is further underlined by this report and the significant contribution of £350m it has brought to the UK economy. This makes it one of the biggest sporting events in the UK in recent history.

“ICC events provide a wonderful platform to connect more deeply with a diverse audience of hundreds of millions of fans and to aggregate audiences like never before even in our increasingly fragmented world.

“The rise of cricket tourism is clearly demonstrated with almost 20% of attendees coming from overseas and a total of 85% of ticket buyers coming from out of town with cricket fans increasingly prepared to travel to support their team. We expect this trend to continue to rise as the Asian sub-continent continues rapid economic growth.

“We are currently in the process of getting expressions of interest from our Members to host future events post 2023 as part of our ambitions to grow the game globally.

“This report clearly demonstrates staging ICC events not only provides our host countries with the opportunity to showcase the very best they have to offer to an enormous global audience they are also a major global driver for social, cultural and economic impact.”