You cannot see the highlights of any of the matches of the 2023 Cricket World Cup on YouTube. Here is why.

Over time, YouTube emerged the go-to place for cricket videos. For years, ICC had uploaded World Cup highlights packages of various lengths on their official channel.

All that, however, was until the 2019 Men’s edition. Search for World Cup 2023 highlights on ICC’s YouTube channel, and you will get no results.

On September 26, 2019, just over two months after the last Men’s World Cup final, the ICC announced a partnership with Facebook (Meta), which would make the latter “the exclusive digital content rights partner for ICC global events in the Indian sub-continent”.

Meta also earned the rights to “carry post match recaps throughout the rest of the world through to 2023” as well as digital content including “in-play key moments and other match and feature content”.

The agreement covers the 2020 and 2022 Women’s T20 World Cups; the 2020 and 2022 Men’s T20 World Cups; the 2021 and 2023 Women’s World Cups; the 2023 Men’s World Cup; the 2021-23 Men’s World Test Championship final; the 2019 Qualifier for the Men’s T20 World Cup; the 2022 Qualifier for the Men’s World Cup; and the 2020 and 2022 Men’s Under-19 World Cups.

Some of these events were subsequently postponed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the agreement remained applicable to all of them.

As a result, videos of the 2023 World Cup (or any of the ICC events mentioned above) – highlights, clips of match incidents, pre- or post-match press conferences – can be found only on Meta platforms like Facebook or Instagram, or on the ICC’s own website.

The BCCI can showcase the highlights of India’s matches on their website, but they are exceptions to this rule.

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