With the top players earning in excess of $400,000 for participating in the three-week tournament, the WPL instantly became the biggest league in the women’s game. Coverage of the tournament in the UK got off to a sticky start, however, with broadcaster Sky Sports Cricket showing 20 minutes of adverts followed by re-runs of old coaching videos in the first 30 minutes of its slated coverage on the tournament.

According to their TV schedule, Sky Sports’ coverage of the game was set to begin at 1:50pm, forty minutes before the beginning of the first game between Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Giants.

Instead, viewers were fed a diet of adverts plugging other Sky programmes rather than building up to the opening game of the WPL.  Several viewers took to Twitter to complain about the showing of the adverts.

@SkyCricket what is happening with WPL coverage. So far it’s been 20 minutes of adverts for sky programmes.

— Dick Glover (@Dick_Glover) March 4, 2023

Starting to wonder if Mr Sky forgot to put his 10p in the WPL meter? Ads… ads…. ads… more ads…

— CRICKETher 🏏 (@crickether) March 4, 2023

Is anyone else’s Sky just not showing WPL ..

— Melissa Story (@melissagstory) March 4, 2023

The likely cause of the programming error was a late change in start time for the game, from 2pm to 2:30pm UK time to accommodate the opening ceremony which Sky chose not to show.

Sky Sports are yet to respond to our approach for comment.