The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced a global partnership with Sportsradar, making them the official data distribution and official live streaming partner of the ICC.

The agreement sees the platform cover 275 top-tier matches including eight of the men’s and women’s tournaments, starting this month with the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, hosted by India in the UAE and Oman, through to the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup in 2023, ANI reported from Mumbai.

Commenting on the partnership, Finn Bradshaw, Head of Digital at ICC, said, “Innovative use of sports data is one of the key pillars of our digital strategy. This partnership with Sportsradar will help us to grow our global cricket fanbase and deepen our engagement with it.”

Backed by the technology and specialist cricket capabilities of InteractSport, the enterprise looks to use its cricket live score plus (CLS+) data-capture tool to provide ‘deep, rich, live ball-by-ball’ match data to media platforms via bespoke feeds and dedicated channels.

Speaking on the partnership, David Lampitt, Managing Director, Sports content and partnerships at Sportsradar, said, “Cricket is among the most popular sports globally, and we see huge potential to grow its fan base still further, helping fans interact with the game on an even deeper level.”

“Our partnership with the ICC is an exciting step towards engaging those new fans and, with the full breadth of our unique technology powering it, we will deliver enhanced cricket content globally – across a range of platforms,” added Lampitt.

The business will integrate the ICC data into its Premium Cricket Service (PCS), in a bid to create an ‘enhanced provision’ for sportsbook operators, while the new data will also be used to power the ICC’s digital platforms, including icc-cricket.com and its mobile app.

Sportsradar’s Integrity services will provide the ICC with monitoring and reporting for all 275 matches through its Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS), which scans the possible fraudulent or match-fixing activities.