Italian TV station Rai 1 once again enjoyed record ratings for the Italian second round World Cup match against Australia. A last minute penalty from Francesco Totti saw off the Aussie challengers and 17.3m million Italians tuned in, representing an 80% share for Rai 1. Once again Initiative Milano employees watched the game together in their offices. Italy now face Ukraine in the quarter finals
Read the report from Initiative Milan on the viewing statistics for the Italy vs Australia match
8% more viewers globally watched the Group Stage of World Cup 2006 than World Cup 2002.
Do you enjoy the Group Stage of the World Cup or do you only tune in for the knockout stages? Let us know by posting a comment!
Millions of fans from all over the world tune in to watch the Brazilian soccer team, attracted by the exciting, attacking soccer that Brazil is so well-known for producing. At World Cup 1998, Brazil‘s group matches attracted more viewers than any other team. Initiative’s most recent ViewerTrack shows that during the group phase of World Cup 2006, Brazil is again the most watched team.
As Initiative predicted before World Cup 2006 kicked-off, average global audiences have been higher for Brazil’s matches than for any other team during the group stages. Brazil vs. Croatia has been the most watched match to date globally, with an average live program audience of 124 million viewers across 53 markets.
Other tournament favorites are also proving to be popular with TV fans. Germany, Italy, England and France make up the rest of the top five most watched teams during the group stage at World Cup 2006.
Tournament outsiders are less popular in terms of in-home TV audiences. The least watched teams during the group stage of World Cup 2006 were Iran, Trinidad & Tobago and Serbia & Montenegro. These teams failed to win any of their matches at this year’s World Cup.
Group matches involving the tournament favorites were also most popular in previous World Cups. The top five most watched teams during the group stages of the last three World Cups were:
Brazil dropped to the fifth most watched team during the group stages of World Cup 2002. Despite attracting a wide global fan base, the Brazilian team is still most popular in South America where many of the live matches were broadcast in the middle of the night in 2002.
Brazil are the world's No.1 most watched team at World Cup 2006 so far
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World Cup 2002 gave global advertisers and sponsors the opportunity to reach mass audiences across Asia-Pacific for the first time.
Local interest was already high with Japan and South Korea jointly hosting the tournament, and was buoyed by the unprecedented success of the South Korean team in reaching the semi-finals. With matches played live at convenient times of day for viewing in Asia-Pacific, audiences for the World Cup had never been higher in this region.
Initiative’s most recent ViewerTrack, however, reveals that this enthusiasm has not extended to watching World Cup 2006 in anywhere near the same numbers as in 2002. Of the 49 markets for which data is currently available, seven of the ten biggest drops in World Cup audiences in 2006 compared with 2002 are from countries in Asia-Pacific.
Audiences for live broadcasts of matches in the group phase are down by as much as 80 per cent in some parts of the region, with the steepest declines in China Guangzhou, China Shanghai and Malaysia.
The poorer performance of the Asian teams at World Cup 2006 compared with World Cup 2002 partly explains these falling audiences. TV audiences are even down in Australia despite the team having their most successful ever World Cup campaign in 2006. Even though average Australian audiences were more than four times higher for matches involving Australia than the average across all matches, their overall viewing is still down on 2002 levels. This reflects the fact that time zones and scheduling are arguably the most important factors in determining audiences for major international sporting events.
Matches from World Cup 2006 are broadcast live late at night and in the early hours of the morning across Asia-Pacific. It tends to be only the most hardcore fans, typically men, who are dedicated enough to watch the action live. With the World Cup being broadcast off-peak in 2006 in Asia Pacific, the female viewing share has declined in this region. For example, World Cup 2006 female viewing share has fallen from 49 per cent to 40 per cent in Japan and from 50 per cent to 45 per cent in South Korea.
Audiences in South Korea are still on a par with those in other major soccer markets, despite this fall in viewing in 2006 compared with 2002. On average, World Cup 2006 matches are being watched by 8 per cent of the South Korean population, the same proportion as are watching in both the UK and France. Matches in the UK and France are being broadcast in primetime and their national teams are still in the tournament. This shows just how popular World Cup 2006 is proving to be in South Korea, despite the impact of time zones.
Over the course of the last decade, the French soccer team has entertained the world with its stylish and skillful brand of play, especially from the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry. Its success has meant that its matches have in the past attracted very large TV audiences globally, compared with other teams.
Hundreds of millions of fans globally saw France’s games when they hosted World Cup 1998. At that tournament, their matches were the second most watched globally, behind only the ever-popular Brazil. With Brazil naturally not playing at Euro 2000, France’s matches were the most watched of all at that tournament, when France added the European crown to their world title.
Initiative’s most recent ViewerTrack, however, shows that until now the French team has not attracted TV viewers around the world in the same numbers as it used to. During their relatively disappointing World Cup 2002 and Euro 2004 campaigns, they slipped to the 7th most watched out of all participating teams. After the first 32 matches of World Cup 2006, they were only the 9th most watched team in terms of global average viewing figures.
The Spanish appear to be particularly uninterested in France’s matches at World Cup 2006. Out of the 32 participating teams, France’s matches have so far only attracted the 26th highest audiences in Spain. This means France’s games are of even less interest to the Spanish than the likes of Togo, Trinidad & Tobago and Paraguay. However, this is set to change after France and Spain played each other in the Second Round.
Unsurprisingly, the French team still enjoys great home support and is the most-watched team in France itself. The Brazilian audience also appears to enjoy France’s matches. In Brazil, France’s matches are the fourth most watched so far. Let's see what happens on Saturday night!
7 of 10 countries with fastest falling World Cup audiences are from Asia-Pacific.
Are you living in APAC and still watching the World Cup? Post a comment!
With the World Cup having been jointly hosted by Japan and Korea in 2002, it was very inconvenient for US soccer fans to follow the matches during the night. Although millions of people watched the live and time-shifted broadcasts of the tournament four years ago, the scheduling of the games did not lend itself to huge audiences being drawn in the US.
Initiative’s latest ViewerTrack shows that, with the World Cup being held in Germany this year, US audiences are booming on the back of much better scheduling this time round. With matches being broadcast live throughout the day, average audiences have more than doubled compared with World Cup 2002. Over the first 29 matches of this year’s tournament, average program audiences across live and time-shifted broadcasts are 4.0 million, up from 2.0 million in 2002. Thanks to a change in the Nielsen measurement of Univision, all US viewers of that network can now be counted. This expands the sample beyond the Hispanics only. The National Nielsen projections show US audiences now nearly as large as those in the UK, where average program audiences per match are only slightly higher, at 4.3 million people. This is in spite of the US team failing to win a match in World Cup 2006, whereas they reached the quarter-finals in 2002.
While the Hispanic market accounts for a sizeable share of soccer viewing in the US, it is also catching on among the broader population. Data on which team’s matches are most watched reflects this. In 2002, Mexico’s matches were most watched among the US population, with the US’s own matches only second most popular. This time, Brazil’s matches are most popular, with large audiences for their games split across both ABC / ESPN and Univision.
Soccer is also catching on among women. In 2002, women accounted for only 32 per cent of the total TV audience. That share has now risen to 35 per cent.
Using Initiative online survey tool eSpy, Initiative Hamburg has conducted a survey designed to see how the people of the Germany are enjoying the World Cup and how they are using different media to consume it.
The excitement of being the host nation prompted 82% of respondents to admit to being gripped by World Cup fever. In terms of favourites to win, Brazil are still very much the front runner, despite many pundits’ beliefs that they have not been at their very best so far this tournament. 35% tip Ronaldinho, Kaka et al to take the cup back to South America, while only 19% backing Germany to maintain their current good form long enough to take the trophy.
Additionally, only 20% of respondents named Germany as their favourite team, although they were still the most popular of all participating countries. The surprise second favourite team was Trinidad & Tobago, whose antics against Sweden and England persuaded 15% of respondents to name them as their favourite team.
The survey also revealed some of the ways in which Germans are using different media to keep up with the World Cup. Much has been made of the likely upsurge the tournament will provoke in the sales of High Definition TV sets in Germany and of those questioned in the survey, 11% had bought new TV sets for the tournament. Almost half of these were HD ready. TV was also named as the most important source for World Cup news and information. Perhaps most surprisingly, newspapers were the second most popular source, ahead of even the Internet. Perhaps this goes to show that, even in an era mass digital development and change, the power of the humble printed word has not completely diminished.
US average program audiences of 4 million for World Cup 2006.
Are you surprised by the audience size in the US? Let us know, post a comment!
