Why We Watch — A PET Research Study of Engaged Cricket Fans
FanCode knew what its users did — minutes watched, days active, what they paid for. But the team didn't know why people watch. To answer that, we did a formal PET Research study — Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust — a behavioral methodology designed to uncover the drives and blocks behind real user decisions. Not what users say they feel, but the belief underneath it.
UX Researcher
4 UX member
16 cricket fans, 2 cohorts
9 emotional archetypes + drives & blocks framework
Challenge
FanCode's product decisions were being made on assumptions about why fans watched non-IPL, non-Team-India cricket. Behavioral analytics showed what users did. PET Research was the right methodology to surface why they decided — and what was stopping them from going further.
Three questions to answer:
What drives engaged fans to watch cricket beyond mainstream (IPL, Team India)?
What blocks them from converting, going deeper, or staying loyal to FanCode?
How are FanCode users emotionally different from non-FanCode cricket fans?
Why PET (and not regular interviews)
Traditional qualitative interviews surface feelings: "I like this," or "I'm anxious about that." PET Research goes deeper — using laddering and 5-Whys to uncover the belief behind the feeling, and the decision shaped by the belief.
For FanCode, that meant moving from "users watch PSL" to "users watch PSL because Pakistani bowlers feel under-rated, and rooting for under-rated talent is how they see themselves."
That's the level of insight product strategy needs to build fandom, not just features.
Setup & Sampling
Getting the sample right mattered as much as the questions. We needed two distinct cohorts to compare: FanCode's own engaged users, and engaged cricket fans who weren't on FanCode at all.
Cohort 1 — FanCode users (target 10, completed 6) Engaged = at least 41 minutes on app AND 4 distinct days in the last 30. Split by subscription type (monthly/yearly), Dream11 vs. non-Dream11, income tier, age, and city tier. The Dream11 split was deliberate — we didn't want the research skewed toward fantasy users, who have different motivations.
Cohort 2 — Non-FanCode fans (target 10, completed 10) Watches 1hr+ of cricket per week, consumes non-India/non-IPL content, holds an active paid subscription on Hotstar, SonyLiv, or Amazon Prime. Same demographic matrix as Cohort 1 for clean comparison.
All sampling criteria were derived from Adtech and Conviva data, not guesswork.
Research Protocol
60 minutes. Two halves. One rule: keep asking why.
What, when, where, how. When did you last watch a non-India tour? How did you find out about it? What do you do before the match, during, after? Where do you watch, on what device, with whom?
Emotional drivers (30 min) — 5 Whys + laddering. Why does it matter to you? Why that? Why does that feel important? Keep going until you hit the belief underneath the behavior.
Verbatim quotes were captured throughout — users' own words, in Hindi and English, became the strongest signal for downstream synthesis.
"Cricket mein nepotism nahi hota" — drive (fairness, escapism, life parallel) "Fantasy khelunga toh addiction ho jayega" — block (moral concern, self-regulation) "Bat utha ke alag vibe aata hai" — drive (nostalgia, physical embodiment) "PSL dekhta hu kyunki Pakistan ke bowlers acche hote hai — acha cricket dekhne ko milega" — drive (quality of craft, player appreciation)
Synthesis
From raw notes to a structured framework
After each session, notes were mapped across the full user journey: Awareness → Pre-match → During match → Post-match → Fan affinity. Then clustered into patterns — first behavioral, then emotional.
The PET output structure has two sides:
Drives — what pulls users in. Emotional rewards that make watching feel worth it. Blocks — what holds users back. Frictions, fears, and trade-offs that interrupt or prevent engagement.
Every finding was grounded in a specific participant quote or observed behavior, not a generalization.
9 Emotional Archetypes
The 16 participants — their stories, beliefs, and behaviors — synthesized into 9 archetypes. Each is grounded in a real person.
Wannabe RJ (Shivam, 21, student) Relates to cricket like Bollywood — the drama, the unscripted moments, the personalities. Loves commentary and the theatre of it. Cricket is entertainment, not sport.
Know It All (Rishi, 24, cashier, Patna) Watches to predict. Needs to be right before it happens. Stats are a tool, not a feature — he processes them mentally, not through an interface. Wants the "stadium feel" from his screen.
Fitness Buff (Deepuk, 34, security supervisor) Follows players for their lifestyle and physical story, not just the game. Low social engagement, high personal engagement. Watches because he loves the discipline and physical narrative behind elite athletes.
Social Bug (Sagar, 28, HCL + Harshil, 23) Cricket is the bonding currency. Closed WhatsApp groups where only cricket is allowed. Pub viewing. Meme sharing. Loyalty to players drives fandom, not teams. Fantasy is "insulting to the game."
Struggling Sachin / Samrat (Sachin, 27, salesman + Samrat, 28, salesman + Ashish, 23, student) Cricket as a shortcut to a different life. Didn't get the breaks. Sees players from similar backgrounds make it, and feels the resonance. "Uski tarah main bhi kar sakta tha." Watching is aspirational and bittersweet.
Aspiring Ajit (Ajit, 23, agri student) Wanted to be a cricketer. Now watches to learn. Studies technique, decision-making, field placements. Cricket as ongoing education.
Fantasy Folk (Mahesh, 24, mech engg + Harpreet, 26, teacher with 20+ fantasy apps) Watches to play. Plays to watch. Will follow ECS and BBL because there's less competition in smaller tournaments. Subscription to every streaming app. High frequency, high volume. Watching is research.
Superhero / Saviour (Mainak, 33) Needs a hero. Started because of family, has a deep pride for Indian cricket and emotionally projects onto players who struggle and prevail. A player's adversity is their own story.
Pride for MY Team (S. Kailash, 30) Patriotism as identity. Follows because of pride, not strategy. Strong sense of belonging to a team or nation through sport.
Drives & Blocks Framework
The archetypes cluster under four core emotional drives — and reveal consistent, specific blocks that product and design need to address.
DRIVES
Belonging — cricket as a social currency, closed groups, shared rituals
Aspiration — following players from humble backgrounds, seeing yourself in them
Thrill — the unscripted nature of cricket, real-time decision-making, wickets and super overs
Life parallels — cricket as a mirror for fairness, struggle, coolness under pressure
BLOCKS
Time scarcity — work, family, timezone. Non-India tours run at odd hours. Mobile watching is a workaround, not a preference.
Stream quality — Hotstar is the gold standard. Jio has 4K. FanCode has ground to make up. Low-data streaming is a real need.
Moral concerns around fantasy — a significant block. Several users called fantasy "addictive," "disrespectful to the game," or morally uncomfortable. This block is dressed as a feature request in other research — PET surfaced it as a values conflict.
Lack of platform trust & discovery — Cricbuzz is the universal entry point, even for FanCode users. The bell icon is used to track matches. FanCode is the destination for watching, not discovering.
Key Insights
Cricket fandom is player-led, not team-led. Across all 16 participants, loyalty tracked people — not franchises or nations. A player's background, personality, and story mattered more than the team they played for. Product implications: player-centric navigation, player story content, alerts around specific players.
Cricbuzz is the universal entry point — even for FanCode's own users. Both cohorts opened Cricbuzz first to check the schedule. FanCode is where they go to watch, not where they go to discover. This is a discovery gap, not a content gap. The schedule is there; the habit isn't.
Streaming quality beats novelty features — every time. Prediction games, live chat, hype mode, quizzes — users called these "fun at first" and "childish" when pressed. The features that matter: quality video at low data, reliable buffering, good regional commentary. Hotstar sets the standard. FanCode needs to close the gap on basics before adding more.
Highlights are a next-morning ritual — and ads are breaking it. The most consistent finding across both cohorts: miss the match → check score in the morning → watch highlights. FanCode has highlights. But 5–6 ads mid-highlights is breaking the loop and pushing users to YouTube. This is a retention gap disguised as a product gap.
Mobile = privacy, not compromise. Users watch non-India cricket on mobile not just because it's convenient, but because the family doesn't share the interest. Mobile watching is a private act of fandom. Commentary in their language. Their pace. Their choice.
Conclusion
The PET principle this work reinforced: behavioral data tells you what users do. PET Research tells you why they decide.
For FanCode, the "why" was the difference between building features and building fandom. Users don't watch non-India cricket because of a notification, a hype mode, or a prediction game. They watch because cricket lets them be someone — the know-it-all, the aspiring cricketer, the proud fan, the one who saw it coming.
Understanding that is what turns a streaming platform into something people are loyal to.