'Amazing' World Cup TV audiences

Johannesburg - South African fans were right behind Bafana Bafana, from the opening game against Mexico (10.054 million viewers) to our final clash against France (9.43 million viewers).

But some media specialists have been less than excited about the audience rating of 30AR's (30% reach of the target audience) for the opening match.

They shouldn't be, says Rob Smuts, MD of RMS Media. "One has to look at the audience in terms of share of total TV viewership to contextualise the success and pulling power of the World Cup," he points out.

"The Mexican match generated an 86.9% share of all television viewership (adults and children aged four plus). In layman's terms, the match attracted just short of nine out of every 10 TV viewers. A truly amazing performance."

These are the results of audience monitoring in 24 countries of the first 48 matches in 24 countries by Columbus Media International - a network of independent media specialists. RMS Media, one of South Africa’s specialist media agencies, was invited to participate. 

Across the 24 countries, the first stage group matches accumulated 2.4 billion viewers.

"Audience for the evening game against Uruguay was higher than that of the French clash at 9.757 million viewers, but achieved  a slightly lower share of available viewership at 80% due to a bigger total viewership pool," says Smuts.

"Share rose once again during the victorious afternoon game against France, generating a phenomenal 84% share of viewership. Quite remarkable numbers - non-World Cup advertisers would be wise to take note of match schedules."

Brazil tops viewer toll

Initial learnings reveal that factors affecting viewership include the country's population and interest in football, the importance to a country's fan base to particular matches, free-to-air versus pay-TV transmission of games and the time of live coverage. A convenient kick-off time of 20:30 in SA equates to 03:30 in Japan and 14:30 on the US east coast.

An illustrative example is the 20:30 June 12 match between England and USA. England registered 17 million viewers with a 67% share of TV audience, while audience in the US peaked at 10 million viewers, only achieving a 16% share of total TV viewership.

"But Brazil has a universal following. The biggest audience monitored for the group games was Brazil versus Korea, with an audience of 95.9 million. Interestingly SA contributed the 6th biggest audience for this game."

The Germany to Australia game generated the second-biggest group stage audience of 92.7 million; third was the Italy-Paraguay game (90.8 million).

Despite SA going out at the group stage, our patriots and soccer fans have kept audiences high. The Brazil-Netherlands quarterfinal achieving 54% of all TV viewership and the Ghana-Uruguay clash got 60%. "These are figures which a Springbok-All Black rugby clash can only dream about," says Smuts.

The Soccer World Cup was first televised in 1954 and has become the world's most-watched event. The final in Germany was watched by 715 million individuals - one-ninth of the entire population of planet Earth.

 - Fin24.com