Indian Premiere League cricket exceeds expectations

Season three of the Indian Premier League (IPL) ended last week when the Chennai Super Kings beat the Mumbai Indians in the final match. That game brought to a close a fast-paced and fun season of cricket, which was available for the first time on the IPL channel on YouTube.

Over the course of the season, the IPL channel racked up nearly 55 million views from 200 countries and territories around the globe, blowing away our expectations. But perhaps most surprising for us was the popularity of the IPL finals in the U.S., where the sport has a relatively small cult following: views from the U.S. of the IPL channel for the semi finals and finals actually exceeded views from India, where the sport is hugely popular.

Here are some additional stats you might find interesting:

• On the day of the final match, the IPL channel got about four million views.
• The majority of users who viewed the final watched it in real-time.
• The IPL channel is now the #1 most subscribed channel in India of all time.
• U.S. was second only to India in terms of total channel views for the entire season.

Before we launched the IPL channel on YouTube, we anticipated a total of around 10 million streams for the entire season. Your views beat our goals by over 5x. Thanks to everyone for tuning in.

Amit Agrawal, Strategic Partner Development Manager, recently watched "2010 IPL Final: Awards Ceremony.”