In 2025, Pakistanis are searching online not just for goals and game scores, but for financial knowledge, tech platforms, drama episodes, and modern tools to navigate a rapidly evolving economy. On the surface, the trends look familiar: cricket dominates, TV dramas remain a national pastime, technology and social media continue to eat up attention.
But look closer and a different pattern emerges. What paints a clear picture isn’t just the volume of searches — it’s what people are searching for: from cricket leagues to specific drama serials, from “how to invest in the stock market” to “how to apply for a credit card,” from “how to invest in crypto” to AI platforms, and yes, even “how to unsend Instagram messages.” These queries tell a story of passion, aspiration, and digital adoption — and they offer a window into how interest and intent are shaping Pakistan’s cultural and economic direction today.
According to a press release by Google, cricket continues to lead Pakistan’s search trends for another year, with major matchups and tournaments dominating online curiosity. Fans actively searched for fixtures like Pakistan’s matches against South Africa, India and New Zealand. Among major tournaments, Pakistan’s homegrown HBL Pakistan Super League remained the most popular tournament alongside “Asia Cup and ICC Champions Trophy, which Pakistan hosted this year,
Apart from cricket, Pakistanis switched to local dramas for some more entertainment. Dramas remained a favourite topic of interest for Pakistani viewers in 2025, with audiences eagerly following the storylines and performances that kept them hooked.
On the tech front, searches for AI tools like “Gemini”, “On4t” and “Google AI Studio” highlighted Pakistanis’ growing interest in artificial intelligence. Once again, reflecting cricket’s grip in Pakistan, the streaming apps like Tamasha remained popular choices to search, also indicating the growing rise of streaming. Trending searches for non-fungible tokens reflected a desire to explore emerging digital innovations. In 2025, Pakistanis also increasingly turned to Google Search for real-time updates on the issues that mattered most in their daily lives. Critical topics such as the Karachi floods and the flooding near the Chenab River saw a surge in searches, with people looking for the latest alerts, safety information, and on-ground developments. Users also sought clarity on key government initiatives like the Punjab Socio-Economic Registry, Asaan Karobar Card and other schemes.
Pakistanis also explored a mix of fun and practical searches—from navigating car insurance, dabbling in investments, and even creating Ghibli-style photos, reflecting a country that stays curious, adaptable, and digitally engaged.
Over the past 15 years, Pakistan’s internet user base has exploded on the back of 3G and 4G rollout, cheaper smartphones, and falling data costs. Tens of millions of new users have come online, and many of them now treat search as their first instinct for entertainment, information, and financial decisions. Pakistan’s search behaviour has quietly become a proxy for what the country cares about — and increasingly, what it wants economically.
Cricket and the money behind it
Cricket is still the gravitational centre of Pakistan’s sporting imagination, so it’s no surprise that sports — and especially cricket — dominate search trends. But what’s changed over the past decade is that Pakistan’s main cricket obsession, the HBL Pakistan Super League (PSL), is no longer just a sport or even just a TV product. It has become, in the words of Profit’s detailed breakdown, “Pakistan cricket’s financial lifeline.”
When the PSL was announced in 2015, international cricket in Pakistan was effectively in exile. Since the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore, foreign sides had refused to tour, stadiums sat underutilised, and the franchise-based Indian Premier League (IPL) dominated the global T20 economy. Between political instability and security concerns, few would have bet that a Pakistan-based league would become a stable business, let alone the single biggest recurring revenue source for the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).
Yet that is exactly what happened. From 2017 onwards, the PSL became the PCB’s largest revenue generator every single year — often contributing up to half of total income and keeping the board solvent even when other tours fell through or earnings from the International Cricket Council (ICC) fluctuated.
The PSL’s financial model is simple on paper but complex in practice. Six franchises signed 10-year deals to lease team rights, paying annual franchise fees ranging roughly from $1.1 million (for Quetta) to $6.35 million (for Multan). Those fees go directly to the PCB, which in turn organises the tournament, covering stadiums, accommodation, logistics and broadcasting. The league also earns from broadcasting rights, sponsorships, gate receipts and other income that are pooled into a central revenue pool. This pool is then shared between teams and the board: each team receives around 15% of the pool, the PCB gets about 5% plus the entire franchise fee pot.
But the HBL PSL has had another impact. In 2023, the tournament brought in Rs 3.55 billion for the PCB. It was the second largest source of revenue for the board that year. The surprising part is that it had been the highest source of revenue five years running, but it was beaten in 2023 by a record $17 million (Rs 4.24 billion) payout from the ICC that year. That is because the HBL PSL has actually been the reason that has allowed Pakistan to get international cricket back, and the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 will have brought even more revenue, with some reports suggesting the PCB’s payout for that tournament alone is close to $16 million.
The trend is clear: regardless of wider political or economic turbulence, the HBL PSL revenue has stayed in a tight, high band — exactly the sort of consistency any cash-strapped sports governing body dreams of.
For fans searching for PSL schedules, team drafts, or live scores, this money story has mostly been invisible. However, the recent row between the PCB and Multan Sultans owner Ali Tareen has increased interest in this subject, possibly contributing the the increased searches.
In that sense, every time PSL surges into the search charts, it’s not just a sign of national fandom — it’s a reflection of a league that now anchors PCB’s balance sheet, pumps billions into reserves, and still leaves its private investors pushing for a better deal.
Drama, digital and Hum TV’s quiet YouTube revolution
If cricket is Pakistan’s most powerful collective ritual, TV dramas are its most personal one. Families, friends, and WhatsApp groups revolve around which serial is airing, which character is trending, and which episode has just dropped. Unsurprisingly, dramas and entertainment rank high in 2025’s search trends.
But behind those drama searches sits a media industry whose business model is being rewritten by YouTube. The clearest case study is Hum Network Ltd (Hum TV), a company that spent most of its 20-year history as a conventional broadcaster — and is now transforming into one of Pakistan’s largest digital creators.
According to Profit’s reporting, by the end of the financial year ending June 30, 2024, digital revenue and subscription income — primarily from YouTube and other online platforms — accounted for 18% of Hum Network’s total revenue. This is up from what used to be a negligible share: for years, online revenue barely registered in the accounts compared to traditional TV advertising.
The scale of Hum’s digital presence is staggering:
- 51 million+ subscribers on its official YouTube channel
- 46 billion views accumulated across content
- Subscription income from YouTube and digital platforms has grown at a 10-year compound annual growth rate of 30%, reaching Rs 2.2 billion in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025.
To put that in perspective: a 30% CAGR over a decade means digital earnings have multiplied many times over. Yet even without reconstructing each historical data point, a snapshot of today’s revenue mix is telling.
That slice may still look smaller than the TV piece, but the direction of travel is clear: digital is no longer a side income, it’s a core pillar of Hum’s business — and one that continues to grow faster than traditional advertising.
Every search for an episode on YouTube, every autoplay on a Hum clip, and every binge of an older serial feeds into this digital engine. For a long time, mainstream broadcasters relied almost exclusively on ad-funded programming and carriage fees. But with audience habits shifting online, YouTube’s monetisation model has opened a second, and in some cases third, layer of income:
- Ad revenue from YouTube itself
- Brand integrations and sponsorships built into digital-first content
- Long-tail earnings from older dramas that continue to rack up millions of views years after first airing
This is particularly important in a Pakistani ad market that is cyclical and sensitive to macroeconomic shocks. When brand budgets tighten, TV spends usually shrink. But digital, being more targeted and global, often proves more resilient — especially when diaspora audiences are factored in.
In Hum’s case, the acquisition of Ten Sports in 2024 complicates the revenue mix. Sports broadcasting has little overlap with YouTube drama monetisation, so the addition of Ten Sports made the revenue “pie” bigger, which in turn reduced the digital share percentage-wise even though absolute digital earnings kept rising. That nuance is crucial: a smaller percentage can still mean a larger rupee figure.
So when dramas top Pakistan’s search charts, what’s really happening beneath the surface is the consolidation of a hybrid media model: one leg in linear TV, one leg in platform-driven digital, and both monetised in rupees, ads, and watch-time. For a channel like Hum, YouTube is no longer just a clip library; it is big business, with billions of views and billions of rupees attached.
From risky DMs to risky assets: “How to” searches, investing, gold, crypto and AI
Scroll further down Pakistan’s search trends and the picture gets eclectic. At one end are the distinctly 2025-ish questions like “how to unsend Instagram messages” — a quiet testimony to risky DMs, late-night regrets, and the universal human urge to take something back.
At the other end are searches that show a very different instinct: “how to invest in the stock market,” “how to apply for credit cards,” and “how to invest in the crypto market.” These “how to” queries, especially when they cluster around finance, say more about the country’s economic psychology than any single macro stat.
Pakistan’s stock market has been on a record-breaking spree. On 16 December 2024, the KSE-100 index surged past 116,000 points for the first time, closing at 116,169.41, after touching an intraday high of 116,681.59.
By 1 July 2025, it hit another all-time high of 128,199.42, as PSX opened the new fiscal year with strong buying across autos, banks, oil and power stocks.
Just over a month later, on 6 August 2025, the KSE-100 breached the 145,000-point mark, closing at 145,088.49 — a level that would have seemed unthinkable only a couple of years earlier.
In parallel, Profit has documented how digital payments and financial inclusion are deepening. The State Bank’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2024-28 sets a target to raise overall financial inclusion to 75% and narrow the gender gap from 34% to 25% by 2028, with a strong focus on underserved regions and digital channels.
The Raast instant payment system processed Rs 1 trillion in just 16 days in 2024, signalling rapid adoption of low-cost digital transfers. An SBP report in October 2024 noted that digital payments volumes surged 35% in FY24, underscoring how quickly mobile wallets, QR payments, and online transfers are taking hold.
On the private side, global players like Visa talk openly about using digital payments as a gateway to financial inclusion in Pakistan, viewing the country as an under-penetrated but high-potential market.
Put together, record equity highs and more accessible digital rails create fertile ground for those “how to invest” searches. A decade ago, becoming an investor meant a broker in a physical office and a lot of paperwork; today, a smartphone, a CNIC and a few taps often suffice. Tutorials explaining basics — opening a CDC account, placing a first order, understanding index levels — now sit just a search bar away.
The query “how to apply for credit card” points in the same direction: more people trying to plug into the formal financial system. As banks digitise onboarding and e-KYC, and as SBP nudges card schemes and issuers to push broader penetration, credit cards are slowly evolving from elite luxury to aspirational middle-class tool.
They also connect directly back to online commerce and subscriptions — including, for instance, paid AI tools, streaming, gaming, and cross-border purchases — making them a bridge between Pakistan’s local consumption and the global digital economy.
Crypto: a banned asset with huge unofficial interest
Then there is crypto. Officially, the picture is restrictive: SBP reaffirmed in 2024 and again in 2025 that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remain illegal, with the Financial Monitoring Unit actively referring crypto-related cases to law-enforcement agencies.
At the same time, Pakistan has begun inching towards a regulated digital currency framework. Proposed amendments to the SBP Act define a central-bank-issued digital currency as legal tender, giving the State Bank the power to manage money in both physical and digital formats.
Meanwhile, the unregulated crypto economy has grown in the shadows. Profit has reported estimates suggesting Pakistanis may already have up to $30 billion in crypto-related investments, with experts warning that unclear regulation could cause the country to miss out on as much as $25 billion in potential opportunities if not addressed. Another report suggested Pakistan may have lost around $600 million in 2025 alone to illegal crypto transactions, as dollars are diverted from the formal banking channel into offshore platforms via informal routes.
Against that backdrop, the search “how to invest in crypto market” is less a casual curiosity and more a reflection of real capital chasing high-risk, high-volatility assets outside the regulated perimeter.
Old habits: Gold never left
Even as stocks, credit cards and crypto attract attention, older methods of saving have not disappeared. In fact, daily gold price stories remain among Profit’s most-read pieces, and “gold rate today” reliably appears in Pakistan’s top search queries. Articles tracking per-tola prices move in tandem with movements in the rupee and international bullion markets, and search behaviour shows that people still check these rates frequently before making buying or selling decisions.
In practical terms, this means Pakistan’s investment psyche is layered:
- A traditional base of gold and real estate
- A rapidly expanding layer of listed equities and mutual funds, enabled by digital access
- An outer ring of crypto and offshore assets, currently operating in a regulatory grey zone
Searches across these categories co-exist, rather than replace each other.
Tech and AI: Pakistan’s new curiosity frontier
Finally, there is the tech layer — particularly AI. Pakistan’s search trends for technology are now dominated by AI and AI-related platforms. That matches policy signals: the government has repeatedly flagged AI as a key pillar of its digital strategy.
A recent Profit story quoted the IT leadership outlining an agenda that includes training 1 million young people in AI and related skills, achieving 98% digitisation of federal governance processes, and building “super apps” for public services.
On the private side, companies like Telenor Pakistan are investing in internal AI upskilling through initiatives such as the AI Verse learning path to train staff and embed AI into everyday operations.
Then there are global platforms. Google has rolled out rupee-priced AI subscriptions in Pakistan, removing the barrier of international credit cards for many would-be users, and is also expanding AI Overview ads to the country, which means Pakistani businesses can buy ad spots directly inside AI-generated summaries.
The Ministry of IT has also partnered with Meta on AI and innovation initiatives, including extending Meta AI in Urduand building public-sector tools.
All of this helps explain why AI platforms show up so prominently in tech-related searches: Pakistanis are not just watching AI happen elsewhere; they are downloading, subscribing, experimenting, and increasingly paying for it in rupees.
The search-shaped future
Taken together, Pakistan’s 2025 search patterns show a country that still loves its cricket and dramas, but is also thinking hard about money, risk, and technology.
Cricket searches orbit a league that has quietly become a multi-billion-rupee financial engine, inflating PCB reserves even as it tests the patience of franchise owners. Drama searches feed into a media model where YouTube is no longer an afterthought but a serious revenue stream, with channels like Hum TV turning views into billions of rupees. “How to” searches about investing, credit cards, crypto and AI sit on top of record stock-market highs, expanding digital payments, and a regulatory system trying to catch up with new assets and technologies.
In the end, these trends point in one direction: Pakistan’s digital public is not just consuming more content — it is trying to participate more in the economy. From speculative crypto bets to disciplined SIPs in the stock market, from learning to code prompts for AI tools to learning how to unsend risky DMs, search behaviour reveals a population edging from passive spectatorship to active decision-making.
Where policy, regulation and corporate strategy go from here will determine whether that energy is channelled into inclusive growth and productive investment — or left to swirl around in unregulated corners of the internet. But one thing is clear: if you want to know where Pakistan’s passions and ambitions are heading next, just look at what people are typing into the search bar.
The post From cricket fandom to financial hustle — what Pakistan’s 2025 searches say about money, media and ambition appeared first on Profit by Pakistan Today.