Short answer: cricket is the most territorially fragmented sport there is — the rights in each country go to a completely different company, and several of them are names you'd never encounter anywhere else. India is JioStar and JioHotstar, the UK is Sky, the US and Canada have a dedicated cricket channel in Willow, Australia's T20 World Cup coverage is on Prime Video, Pakistan has Myco, the Caribbean has ESPN and the Middle East has E&. The uncomfortable part is what it costs: the same tournament runs at a few euros a month in India and roughly ten times that in Britain.
At a glance
Cricket coverage
| Fragmentation | A different licensee in nearly every market |
| India | Star Sports and JioHotstar |
| US & Canada | Willow TV — a cricket-only channel |
| Price gap | Around tenfold between markets |
| Check | ICC and BCCI publish official lists |
Why cricket is the hardest to follow
Football has roughly the same handful of broadcasters across Europe. Cricket doesn't, and there are two compounding reasons.
Rights are territorial, as in every sport, sold country by country to whoever bids most.
But cricket's audience is unusually spread out. A very large proportion of the people who want to watch Indian cricket don't live in India — they're in the UK, the Gulf, North America, East Africa, Australia. Those viewers are a diaspora audience buying coverage of a sport played on the other side of the world, and the rights for their country belong to an entirely separate company from the one broadcasting where the match is happening.
On top of that, cricket has multiple competing rights structures. ICC tournaments are sold globally by the ICC. The IPL is sold separately by the BCCI. Bilateral series are sold by whichever board hosts them. So four different cricket events in one year can appear on four different services in the same country.
The practical consequence: there is no such thing as a cricket subscription. There's a subscription for a particular competition, in a particular country, for a particular rights cycle.
Who holds the rights where
Territories for recent ICC coverage, taken from the ICC's own published broadcaster list.
| Territory | Where to watch |
| India | JioStar — Star Sports channels in multiple languages, streaming on JioHotstar |
| United Kingdom | Sky Sports Cricket and Main Event, streamed via Sky Go or NOW |
| United States & Canada | Willow TV, plus the Willow app and Cricbuzz |
| Australia | Prime Video for the T20 World Cup — streaming only, no linear channel |
| Pakistan | Myco, with PTV Sports and Geo Super on television |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | SuperSport Cricket |
| Caribbean | ESPN Caribbean, streaming through ESPN on Disney+ |
| Middle East & North Africa | E& — CricLife Max on television, StarzPlay for streaming |
Two things to take from that table. First, the sheer variety — eight territories, eight unrelated companies. Second, that it applies to that tournament: the IPL in the same countries may sit elsewhere, and often does. In Australia, for instance, IPL coverage has run through Fox Cricket and Kayo while the T20 World Cup went to Prime Video.
The ICC and the BCCI both publish official broadcaster lists for their competitions. For cricket more than any other sport, those official lists are the thing to check, because no general guide stays accurate across four rights structures and dozens of territories.
The price gap nobody talks about
This is the honest part of the cricket story, and it explains a great deal of behaviour around the sport.
In India, a streaming subscription covering IPL cricket has been available for a few hundred rupees a month — a handful of euros. In the UK, watching the same tournament through Sky runs to tens of pounds monthly, with day passes available at a lower rate. In the US it comes through specialist packages with their own pricing again.
So the same matches cost roughly ten times as much in one market as another. That isn't a scandal — pricing follows what each market will bear, and Indian streaming is cheap across the board — but it has a specific effect on cricket that it doesn't have on other sports.
A large diaspora audience knows perfectly well that the coverage they're paying a premium for is available cheaply in the country they or their family came from. That knowledge is what drives the search for workarounds more than anything else in this sport.
What's worth saying plainly: obtaining a foreign subscription by misrepresenting your location breaches those services' terms, and accounts do get closed for it. The realistic options are the licensed route in your own country, day passes rather than monthly subscriptions where they exist, or the genuinely free coverage described below — which in cricket is more substantial than in most sports.
The dedicated cricket channels
A feature of this sport you won't find in the others covered here, and worth knowing about if you're in North America.
Willow TV exists solely to broadcast cricket to the United States and Canada. Not a general sports network with cricket among its offerings — a cricket channel. It carries ICC events, and it's typically reached either directly or bundled into South Asian content packages offered by US television providers.
That bundling matters practically: Willow is often cheapest as part of a South Asian channel package rather than bought alone, and those packages are marketed under names that don't mention cricket at all. Someone searching for "cricket on US TV" can easily miss them.
The equivalents elsewhere: SuperSport is the comprehensive cricket home across sub-Saharan Africa, and CricLife serves the Middle East. In each case the pattern holds — a specialist operation serving an audience the mainstream networks don't prioritise.
Free and cheap options
Cricket does better here than most sports, and the options are widely missed.
Free coverage in parts of the Middle East. IPL matches have been available free through Cricbuzz in several MENA countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia — a legitimate, licensed free option for a substantial expatriate audience.
Day passes instead of months. Several broadcasters sell single-day access. For a tournament final or one Test match, that's dramatically cheaper than a monthly subscription, and it's the option most people forget exists.
Free trials around a tournament. Streaming services carrying cricket frequently run trial periods. Timed deliberately against a specific series, that's a legitimate way to reduce cost.
Mobile-only tiers. Indian streaming services have historically offered cheaper mobile-only plans, and at various points free mobile streaming of major tournaments has been used competitively between platforms.
Radio and commentary. Ball-by-ball radio commentary remains free in several countries and, for a format as slow-moving as Test cricket, is a genuinely reasonable substitute rather than a consolation.
Why this sport attracts the worst offers
Cricket has a heavier concentration of dubious streaming offers than almost any sport, and the reasons above explain why: a globally dispersed audience, high prices in the countries where much of that audience lives, and an acute awareness that the same content is cheap elsewhere.
The pitch is always the same — every match, every tournament, every board's cricket, for a couple of euros a month.
The economics answer it. Indian cricket rights alone sell for sums that rank among the largest in world sport, which is exactly why coverage is divided territory by territory and priced as it is. A service offering all of it worldwide for less than any single legitimate subscription isn't a cleverer operator; it isn't paying for the rights, which is unlawful in most countries.
What follows is consistent, and cricket has a particular version of it:
They fail during the matches that matter. An India fixture in a World Cup concentrates one of the largest television audiences on earth into a single moment. That's precisely when capacity collapses.
They vanish without refunds, frequently right after a major tournament ends.
Payment details go to an anonymous operator under no obligation to protect them.
Set against that: a day pass for a final, a free trial timed to a series, or free coverage in the Gulf all cost little and work on the day. The gap between legitimate and otherwise is smaller here than people assume.
Quick answers
Where can I watch cricket? It depends entirely on your country and the competition. India has Star Sports and JioHotstar, the UK has Sky, the US and Canada have Willow TV, Australia varies by tournament, Pakistan has Myco, the Caribbean has ESPN and the Middle East has E&.
Why is there no single cricket subscription? Because ICC tournaments, the IPL and bilateral series are sold separately by different bodies, and each is then sold territory by territory. Four events can be on four services in one country.
Why does cricket cost so much more in the UK than India? Pricing reflects each market, and Indian streaming is inexpensive generally. The same matches can cost roughly ten times more in Britain than in India.
What is Willow TV? A channel existing solely to show cricket in the US and Canada. It's often cheapest bundled into a South Asian channel package rather than bought on its own.
Can I watch cricket free? In parts of the Middle East, IPL matches have been free via Cricbuzz. Elsewhere, day passes, free trials and free radio commentary are the realistic low-cost routes.
How do I find the broadcaster for a specific tournament? The ICC publishes an official broadcaster list for its events and the BCCI does the same for the IPL. Given how many rights structures exist, those official lists beat any general guide.
Cricket rights are sold separately by the ICC, national boards and league owners, and then territory by territory, so arrangements differ by competition and change between cycles. Details here reflect recent published broadcaster listings — check the ICC or the relevant board's official list for the specific tournament. Checked September 2026.