In Bangladesh, cricket is not just considered a mere sport – it is a raw emotion and a rush of adrenaline simultaneously. Emotions that are celebrated from the streets to the field by people from all walks of life. It is this game that is known to bind diverse cultures through joy and excitement through sheer sportsmanship. Thus, Bangladesh Premier League 2019 was one big celebration of cricket in Bangladesh and the talk of the country in the beginning of the year.

Grey Data Science took this opportunity to analyze the buzz of BPL 2019 among the cricket loving population. Grey Data Science is a multi-disciplinary platform that measures and analyses the impact of brands’ & businesses’ online activities and communications, launched by Grey Advertising Bangladesh. It is the pioneer in its respective field and one of the first of its kind in the Bangladeshi market, started studying the online presence and mileage of the BPL 2019.

In the Bangladesh Premier League, cricketers from all over the world participate in seven different teams and battle it out to emerge as the champion of champions. The finale between Comilla Victorians and Dhaka Dynamites, in its sixth season of Bangladesh Premier League took place on February 8th, 2019.

The game was not only celebrated on the field but also on social media, where people from all over the world expressed their excitement. The league motivated individuals from different occupational segments to present their thoughts and opinions on the internet. However, compared to the previous seasons, we did see a drop in the number of female audiences engaging online. Also, the interest among the people who actively participated in the conversation was diversified.

However, don’t let that stop you. The overall impressions of the sixth season reached over a billion impressions! Yes, you read that right! Engaging Posts latched with popular hashtags such as #bpl2019 were used by several mainstream news channels and influencers across the nation throughout the league’s duration.

It is to be noted that majority of the conversations (89% to be precise) were from the Dhaka Division of Bangladesh, while the conversations’ embodiment came from the age range of 25-34.

Now let’s talk about the teams. How much of the engagement share did each team get? A briefed insight comes from the Engagement timeline which points out the match/match-sets that created the most buzz.

The modern-day web fever depends a lot on the volume of the audiences you have access to, through your social spaces. Or as we call it, ‘how many followers?’ While this does little to change the direction of any match, a greater follower footprint will help increase hype for the teams by the time the seventh season arrives.

As you can see below, the teams are ranked according to their position on Facebook, the most widely used social platform in Bangladesh. The Y-axis refers to the follower count, whereas the X-axis refers to the engagement the team’s brand page had throughout the league session. While Rangpur Riders lead the race, Dhaka Dynamites and Comilla Victorians retain audiences more.

In terms of mentions, Rangpur Riders were at the top among all the teams.

The Facebook footprint had somewhat of a direct correlation with how many times, the name of the teams was brought up on social media and in which sentiment. Ultimately, the team with the highest positive sentiments took the cup home.

Players are what make up a team. Thus, the study would be incomplete if we do not evaluate the social buzz about the players. Each catch missed is equivalent to a ton of angry and sad reactions on social media and every six infers a handful of mentions all over the web – adding to the fact that there were a lot more things to talk about this season.

Take AB De Villiers for example. Widely regarded as Mr. 360 in the world of cricket, the 35-year-old South African player became the talk of the town just as he landed in Sylhet. Below is a sentiment representation of the social media audience on the players.

But the top mentions came for Tamim Iqbal who at the perfect moment knew how to seize the opportunity and brought the trophy home to Comilla. Have a look at some of the Top Mentions from all digital platforms and how the player mentions contributed to the respective teams. 

Sometimes players perform exceptionally well, sometimes they can’t. But the social web does not hesitate to judge their performance at every moment. In BPL Season 6, fans had a lot to speak about. Here are some of the moments conversed intensely on the web.

Speaking of moments, when Tamim Iqbal led the Comilla Victorians to victory, the concatenating cheerful waves were not stopped by the walls of Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium that night. It made a sensation overnight reaching leaps and bounds to the corners of Bangladesh and beyond, through social media. The following graph demonstrates that crucial hour in the history of BPL where Tamim swayed the tide in favor of Comilla Victorians. Here’s a look at how his, as well as the team’s victory was celebrated across social media.

At the end of the day, Bangladesh Premier League was a huge success and opened doors to new expectations for the next season.

It’s not astonishing that Cricket is celebrated as a carnivalesque sport, considering it creates emotional outbursts in both the real as well as the virtual world. As we look forward to the next season, let us end the study with a look at what people of Bangladesh felt about the whole season, through emoticons, of course.