As if FIFA didn’t have enough problems at present, the recently-published television audience report for last year’s World Cup in Brazil gives rise to the question, ‘Has the governing body’s flagship tournament plateaued out as a global TV phenomenon?’
To be fair, the answer is almost certainly No. Even if it had, it would be a giddily and enviably high plateau, with the climactic match – the World Cup final – attracting an overall TV audience of in excess of one billion, though you have to include those who tuned in for just one minute to get to that figure.
Even so, it is worth highlighting one or two cold, hard facts from the 79-page report, which is the work of London-based Kantar Media, the “research and insight” arm of WPP, the group where Sir Martin Sorrell has been chief executive for nearly three decades.
If you consider those who watched a minimum of 20 consecutive minutes of coverage, then the total in-home TV audience reach was 2.1 billion viewers, down four percent from the corresponding figure – 2.2 billion – for South Africa 2010.
The average in-home TV audience per live match was 186.7 million; this compared with 188.4 million in South Africa, a decline of just under one percent.
And if you expand the focus to include everyone who watched at least a minute of coverage of the competition, well that measure yielded a total in-home TV audience of 3.2 billion, the same as South Africa 2010.
These figures and trends, by the way, are critically important to FIFA, with TV accounting for 43% of the body’s $5.72 billion in revenue over the 2011-14 financial cycle leading up to the 2014 World Cup.
Bearing those viewing statistics in mind, why then do I think it is probably not right to talk about a plateauing out?
Two reasons. First, the expanding online audience. As the executive summary emphasised, “all of the above audience figures, in-home and out-of-home, relate to television viewing only and no other forms of media”.
While Kantar explained that the level of detail for digital media audience measurement is “not yet in the same level of detail on a global basis as for television”, it did feel able to state that “a projected 280 million people were reached by dedicated 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil match content online or on mobile”.
While some of these people were no doubt watching live action on their televisions at the same time, some of them would have been using their laptop or smartphone exclusively to view the match, and could thus be considered supplementary to the TV audience.
The second reason why I would not be surprised to see World Cup audience figures heading up again for Russia 2018 is geography.
As spelled out by sentence two of the executive summary, “The Asian market observed a decline in audience reach due to the less favourable kick off times which caused the global figure not to rise compared to 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa”.
Particularly dedicated Europe-based World Cup followers might remember the Côte d’Ivoire versus Japan clash, which kicked off at an inordinately late 10pm local time in Recife.
There was a reason for this: it meant that the game could go on air from a relatively civilised 9.45am in Japan, as opposed to the midnight to 7am spectrum within which all other World Cup matches kicked off.
Kantar’s figures suggest that the experiment worked, in that this contest attracted a Japanese audience of 34.1 million viewers on NHK.
Even so, audience reach for the competition in Japan was said to be down 10% from four years ago.
It probably didn’t help that the Japan side, in common with other Asian participants at Brazil 2014, failed to register a single victory.
Audience reach figures in other key Asian markets monitored by Kantar were as follows: China – down 23%; Indonesia – down 31% and South Korea – down 21%.
Australia, whose national association is part of the Asian Football Confederation, bucked the trend, with a reach of 8.2 million against just 5.6 million in 2010 – although that South Africa figure was itself down 19% from Germany 2006, when the Socceroos were extremely competitive, losing narrowly to Italy, the eventual winners, in the Last 16.
Populous but not especially football-mad India also bucked the trend, with audience reach nearly doubling to 85.7 million. In 2010, however, Kantar had noted that audience reach in the country was down 53% from Germany 2006, “mainly due to the main national broadcaster not airing any support programming (such as magazines and highlights) during the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa”.
Not that declines in audience reach were confined to Asia. Kantar’s analysis indicated that the numbers watching at least 20 consecutive minutes of the tournament were 3% down on 2010 levels in Italy, 5% down in the UK and 16% down in Spain, the 2010 world champions who, of course, suffered a surprise early exit in Brazil.
The audience reach figure for Argentina – 2014 finalists – was also down, surprisingly, by 3%, although the live match average audience was well ahead of the 3.1 million registered in 2010 at 3.9 million.
Kantar said that 57 of the 64 matches at Brazil 2014 generated global audiences of over 100 million (live and non-live combined).
The Brazil versus Croatia clash that began the competition was much the most-watched group match, followed by Brazil v Mexico, Germany v Portugal, Spain v Netherlands, Spain v Chile, Germany v Ghana and Uruguay v England.
In China, no less than 77% of the average live audience was male; in Italy, a striking 59 percent of the live game audience was over 50.
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.