12 venues, 45 matches excluding the warm-ups and India will set a world record for the most attended Cricket World Cup ever. With all ICC World Cup 2023 tickets sold out including warm-ups, over 25 lakh fans will grace the stadiums in India. And India vs Pakistan match on Oct 14 will create a world record for the most attended match as the game is happening at the world’s largest cricket stadium with a 1,30,000 capacity in Ahmedabad.
Apart from the 45 matches in the main round, there will 10 warm-up matches as well. And all tickets for the warm-up games are also sold out.
As per the BQPrime report, 20% of the crowd at the stadiums will be foreign tourists while approximately 40% of fans will be inter-city travellers.
So far, BCCI and the ICC have struggled to fulfil fans’ demand for tickets with black-marketing rampant days ahead of ICC World Cup opener on October 5.
ICC World Cup venues
- Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad: Capacity: 132,000
- M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru: 40,000
- MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai: 38,000
- Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi: 55,000
- HPCA Stadium, Dharamsala: 23,000
- Eden Gardens, Kolkata: 66,000
- Ekana Cricket Stadium, Lucknow: 50,000
- Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai: 37,000
- MCA International Stadium, Pune: 37,000
- Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad: 55,000
- Barsapara Cricket Stadium, Guwahati: 50,000
- Greenfield Stadium, Thiruvananthapuram: 50,000
In the previous editions, low-capacity stadiums did not help ICC’s cause. But now that the World Cup is returning to world’s second most populated country, where cricket is above religion, records will shatter.
Big revenue generator
And with big crowd comes big money. Fans have been shelling out an exorbitant amount for tickets, flights and hotels. With all that combined, the mega event will boost India’s GDP by more than $1.5 billion.
As per BQ Prime report, it will be more than three times of the economic impact in the 2015 Australia-New Zealand ICC World Cup. The UK edition of the WC earned $447.8 million in 2019.
Major sources of income
- Flights
- Hotel bookings
- Tickets
- Restaurants
- Local tourism
- Local transport