The Cricbuzz app in 2020, with 100 million downloads, has over 50 million users worldwide
Its app and website covers cricket related news, articles, and provides live coverage of cricket matches.
Owned by Times Internet, the cricbuzz app is available in both Google Play and iOS platforms
In January 2020, CricBuzz was ranked 341 globally and 30 in India by Alexa Internet.
How did it start?
Who founded Cricbuzz?
In 2004, Pankaj Chhaparwal, Piyush Agarwal, and Pravin Hegde created the cricbuzz website.
By 2010, Cricbuzz started providing live cricket scores and live cricket news in their cricbuzz app platform as well.
Cricbuzz in recent years
In 2014, Times Internet gained a maximum stake in cricbuzz
Even then, it is still managed by its founders
In 2015, Times internet owned Go-cricket also got merged with cricbuzz.
Cricbuzz Now
The website is having estimated monthly traffic of 21 million
The viewers spent 2.6 billion minutes on the app (almost 5000 years!! Can you imagine?)
Cricbuzz app is the first sports app in India to cross 100 million downloads.
It is compatible with Android, iPhone, and iPad devices.
Cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world right now
ICC World Cup 2019 was so successful that ICC wants to organize tournaments every year
Therefore, with ICC events becoming so frequent cricbuzz app is bound to grow by leaps and bounds.
Cricbuzz App: Pros
1) Good Rating
In 2020, the Cricbuzz app has an impressive 4.3 stars on Google Play with more than 1 million reviews
It also has an amazing 4.6 stars rating on the iOS App Store platform
2) Easy to understand
Everything that you get in the cricbuzz app is very informative and also easy to understand
On other websites, articles are either too boring or less engaging
The tough vocabulary used in other cricket app makes it harder for audiences to understand
But with this app or even website, users don’t face that problem
It also has a good and simple user interface that makes it quite easy to use
3) Extensive coverage of all international cricket tournaments
It covers every major international cricket tournament that is happening around the world
IPL, CPL, BBL, Natwest T20 Blast, and every major cricket tournament all are covered
It also provides trivia, weather conditions for upcoming and live matches
The cricbuzz app live cricket score feature helps in providing regular cricket update
It also helps people on betting sites to follow what’s happening in the match
Also, you can find an overall match and series stats and record of each player for all three formats of the game
4) Live score updates and ball by ball commentary
In the core, with cricbuzz, we have the fastest live scores and entertaining ball by ball text commentary
Therefore you can follow any match that’s being played right now and get the fastest update
People can easily get notification about interesting moments and can easily share scores with friends and family
You can also tap for live audio commentary and can listen to it in English or any regional languages
5) Lots of cricket resources
It has got a huge amount of cricket resources that are both relevant and engaging to the audiences
Also the cricket news, articles are straightforward for you to find
They have all the latest cricket news from around the world
In-depth analysis is done on current cricket issues
You can always tune in to Cricbuzz for the latest cricket information
Their editorial section also contains weekly articles by Harsha Bhogle
You can easily find every match and complete series review over here
It also contains tonnes of non-core content which makes room for a better cricket experience
6) Lots of visual content
It has got a huge amount of cricket resources that are both relevant and engaging to the audiences
Also, the cricket news, editorials and are very easy for you to find
It also contains tonnes of non-core content which makes room for a better cricket experience
Cricbuzz also has video highlights for select matches, and you can easily relive those games any time you want
7) Cricbuzz archive
The archive section is a nice way to look at past performances
You can easily get stats of 2011,2015 or 2019 World Cup matches or any match you want
Schedule of upcoming matches and dedicated content is readily available for its users
It has also provided content regarding major tournaments like Ashes, IPL, ICC Cricket World Cup, and many more
8) Cricbuzz smart alerts feature
The cricbuzz app has a smart alerts feature, and hence you don’t have to check the scores every time
Push notifications via smart alerts and whatever news, score, and you always get an update
So you don’t miss a ball and get a regular update
9) Cricbuzz interviews and analysis
Recently cricbuzz is taking a lot of exclusive interviews of less-known or somewhat less-known players
Cricbuzz also provides pre and post-match analysis in their app, it’s no less than a treat for all the cricket fans
One thing I feel that with Harsha Bhogle getting involved, things are really getting interesting
Cricbuzz App: Cons
1) A lot of unwanted ads
Cricbuzz contains too much-unwanted ads in their app, and that’s why it’s somewhat annoying for us
We get to see ad popping up as we switch between different tabs
Previously, they placed ads only in the top or bottom banners, but now it covers a large area
I think the video ads are even more irritating than the banner ones
Also, there is some music advertisement that pops up every time which cannot be paused
What worst is that you can’t hide them and it significantly spoils the user experience
2) Cricbuzz commentary
There are many issues on live review as scores don’t get updated fast these days
You cannot go and check the previous overs
Yes, you can go down and check what events happened in last overs but just to a limited extent
Also, there is always a delay to provide the playing XI after the toss
3) Less engaging and less interactive
Sports fan that wants their comments to get heard and wants to interact with each other
Unfortunately, cricbuzz has never given its fans the much-needed platform to express themselves
It doesn’t allow people to comment through their app and asks to provide your login credentials on their website
With so many viewers on the app at a time, and so they can do is to open the platform for interactive conversations
4) No information available on domestic players
It is a very annoying feature as users don’t get to know any information about local players
For example, a few years back, we had no information about Hanuma Vihari
But, he has one of the highest first-class averages, and some of us knew that fact.
So, this lack of information creates a dent in their claim that they are the best in their field
5) No mention of catching and stumping records
There is no mentioning of the number of catches one player has taken in his career
It completely neglects the third aspect of the game, that is fielding
On the other hand, stumping records are only specific to the wicket-keepers
6) Less importance on women’s cricket
Cricbuzz don’t provide women cricket that much importance
There is less to no information available about women cricketers
We have great women cricketers like Mithali Raj or a Jhulan Goswami in our country
But, unfortunately, they don’t provide a good amount of information about them
7) Too much India-oriented cricket news
The app is getting too much India-oriented right now
For example, it focuses on IPL but completely forgets about other T20 leagues in the world like BBL, CPL, and many more
Yes, Indian cricket is the hottest commodity right now, but, it should also focus on cricket news in other parts of the world as well
8) The new layout and navigation isn’t good enough
The new layout and navigation of the app is awful, and it becomes tough to keep track of ongoing live matches
In the earlier version of cricbuzz, fewer clicks were needed but somehow with the new version you need multiple clicks
Multiple clicks for just knowing the live scores is something very tiring, and they should keep an eye on that matter
9) The cricbuzz app sometimes takes much time to load
It has got too many bugs, and there are times you open the app, and it shows no stats
In many cases, I think the re-installation also fails to solve this problem
The slow loading process makes the cricbuzz scores run way too late
10) Some other concerns
For List-A matches, cricbuzz provide only live scores and not the commentary
As I have said, somewhere somehow the domestic cricket doesn’t get its deserved credit
So, it should address these issues going forward and if they do that, cricbuzz will get more loyal viewers for the days to come