I have been privileged to receive, in advance of this week’s Sportel sports content media convention in Monaco, a briefing on 2014 World Cup viewing trends from a leading specialist in the field. The briefing – from Kevin Alavy, managing director – mediabrands at Futures Sport+Entertainment, a US-based sports research consultancy – was unofficial in nature. But it gives an idea of what to expect when the official television audience report for the tournament is published by FIFA.
Alavy’s overarching conclusion, which should come as music to the ears of just about everyone with a stake in the football business, was that the global audience for Brazil 2014 was up slightly in comparison with South Africa four years before.
Given that the average in-home global audience for each live match during the 2010 competition was 188.4 million, an increase of 6% from 2006, this suggests that Brazil 2014 may come close to breaking through the 200 million barrier.
With 57 of the 64 South African matches securing a global average in-home audience of at least 100 million, it will also be interesting to see whether any Brazil 2014 matches at all failed to breach this threshold.
You might not think that a small audience increase was much of an achievement, not least since the world population will have continued to grow in the intervening four years. According to Alavy, however, “if you look at most sporting events, they tend to lose viewers over time” – a phenomenon he attributes to fragmentation as a result of proliferation of both content and devices. Other events, he says, “could easily lose 20-40% of viewership over four years”. Seen in this context, Brazil 2014 seems to have done just fine.
An event in the Americas, moreover, is clearly not conducive to big audiences in Asia, a continent that accounted for three of the four biggest audience reach figures among major markets in 2010. And indeed, Alavy confirms that playing the World Cup in Brazil had “a very large negative impact on viewing figures in east Asia”.
Host nation Brazil, the second-biggest market (behind China) for audience reach in 2010, stepped into the breach: Alavy says it was “the number one country by a large margin”.
That was scarcely surprising, even if the tournament ended in disappointment. What was more unusual is that Brazil’s involvement helped to make the World Cup’s opening match, against Croatia, one of the World Cup’s most-watched games worldwide. Alavy says it ranked in the Top 5 for the entire competition – a feat that would have required an audience of 330 million in 2010. FIFA has already disclosed that 42.9 million watched in Brazil on TV Globo, with a further 1.5 million viewing in Croatia.
If the time-zone was tough for Asia, it was OK for Europe, especially, Alavy says, those countries, like the UK and Portugal, on the continent’s western fringes.
Despite England’s failure to win a single game, Alavy says, UK numbers were up compared to 2010, when the average live match audience was 5.3 million and the peak match audience was 17.9 million.
At Brazil 2014, England’s opening group match against Italy attracted 14.2 million viewers on BBC1. In South Africa, the only England game to make the Top 20 for global average audience was the round of 16 clash with Germany that led ultimately to FIFA’s embrace of goal-line technology. This was seen live by a global average audience of 315 million.
Encouragingly for FIFA, Alavy also points to a “double-digit” increase in the World Cup audience in Russia, the 2018 tournament host. This can hardly have been down to the local team’s scintillating play. Then again, the point of comparison may have been rather low, with audience reach in Russia achieved by South Africa 2010, at 68.5 million, down 20% on the 85.4 million recorded for Germany 2006.
The USA, where audience reach rose 19% from 2006 to 2010, was a further bright spot, as the nation appeared to respond to the backs-to-the-wall heroics of Howard, Dempsey and Co. in their successful efforts to qualify from an exceptionally tough group. FIFA has already disclosed that an audience of 11.1 million watched the thrilling USA versus Ghana clash on ESPN, with a further 4.8 million viewing Univisión’s Spanish coverage in the US.
Says Alavy: “It becomes bigger and bigger with each World Cup that passes.” Already in 2010 the US was ranked fifth of 17 “major markets” with in-home viewer reach put at 94.5 million. It seems likely to have risen to third or fourth place by this yardstick at Brazil 2014, with viewer reach exceeding 100 million.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.