“Majority positive sentiment” associated with cricket: Twitter India’s Amrita Tripathi

We often take our social media for granted, without considering the behind-the-scenes work on platforms like Twitter.

Enter Amrita Tripathi, Head of Global Content Partnerships, Twitter India. A former broadcast journalist, Tripathi, as her designation suggests, leads a team that collaborates with publishers and brands in a manner that ensures users’ experience on Twitter remains organic and authentic.

“The purpose has always been to serve the public conversation, and there are multiple conversations happening at any time,” Tripathi says, in this exclusive conversation with Business of Sports.

Among these many Twitter conversations, sports in general, and cricket in particular, form a key chunk.

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Twitter’s key cricket findings

As per Twitter’s findings, it recorded a whopping 105.4 million tweets about cricket in India between July 2021 and July 2022. Globally, there were 143 million tweets on cricket, clearly emphasizing the outsized role Bharat plays in driving digital chatter around the gentleman’s game.

Twitter’s data suggests that the ICC World T20 tournament is the third biggest cricket event after the ODI World Cup and the IPL, and is followed by 71.4% of the micro-blogging site's users.

Not surprisingly, #CricketTwitter tweets (1.4 million) peaked during the India-Pakistan game at the Asia Cup earlier this year. With another India-Pakistan game scheduled for October 23, 2022 as part of the ongoing T20 World Cup, expect the numbers to be even higher.

The India v Pakistan Asia Cup match saw a record 1.4 million tweets, only surpassed by the 1.5 million tweets when Virat Kohli scored his 71st international century

Speaking about the importance of cricket conversations on Twitter, Tripathi notes:

“We all know in India, whatever language…we all speak cricket. So that was one unifying conversation for us to get behind.”

Adding heft to Tripathi’s observation is Twitter’s survey indicating 75% of its India audience identifying themselves as cricket fans, with 58% of them playing cricket as a sport.

Twitter usage increases while watching sports

Sharing an insight into the behavior of sports fans on Twitter, Tripathi says:

“79% of the users say [that their] usage of Twitter increases while they are watching sports content… a lot of interactivity is during [a match] because people are coming in to share their reactions, their thoughts, give that kind of a personal touch…to what’s happening live.”

The bulk of this 79% of Twitter’s sports loving users prefer to see more live sports broadcasts, as well as instant highlights and social videos.

Leveraging cricket’s positive associations

Twitter remains a preferred source of news and current affairs information, with 51% of its video viewership falling under this category. This is followed by ‘celebrities’ (43%), ‘business/finance’ (39%), ‘educational’ (35%) and ‘sport’ (33%).

Compared to other content categories, Tripathi feels that cricket, as a sport, has an edge in the “majority positive sentiment” associated with it. She notes a “brand-lift effect” that rides on the “momentum of conversations” stemming from cricket.

It is this “brand-lift” that Twitter is hoping its partners can leverage through conversational tools like Twitter Live, Polls, and Promoted Spaces.

Speaking about Twitter’s various content partnerships, Tripathi highlights:

“We have talent like Bhavna Balakrishnan, who’s done Twitter Spaces; we have Aakash Chopra and Harsha Bhogle doing conversations and also ‘Amplify’ related conversations. What we really want to do is look at the wider…gamut of conversations that are happening and then start those partnerships and relationships to see how the audiences can get more of what they want. We are here to ensure [our] audience gets different kinds of content across languages and as inclusively as possible.”

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Other sports still to catch up with cricket

In recent years, there has been a strong push towards making India a multi-sport nation. While non-cricket sports stars like Abhinav Bindra (shooting), the Phogat sisters (wrestling) and Nikhat Zareen (boxing) are utilizing Twitter to engage in a meaningful and impactful manner, it is cricket which rules the roost.

"Am I trending on Twitter?" - Nikhat Zareen after being crowned world champion (Displayed image is from the 2022 Commonwealth Games)

On non-cricket sports’ following on Twitter, Tripathi shares:

“On Twitter, it’s really interesting; you have cricket, football, and WWE… so there is a lot of interest from audiences across sports…we need to now have more brands backing more sports…on Twitter… I think that [the] whole ecosystem has to come together for it [non-cricket sports] to fire, not just on Twitter…but offline as well.”

As India continues to march towards becoming a global sporting powerhouse in the 21st century, Tripathi reiterates Twitter’s facilitative role to inclusively “serve the public conversation” and “support across sports.”