Almost half the world's population watch World Cup in Russia on TV
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 22 December 2018

A success tournament in many ways on the pitch, the 2018 FIFA World Cup football tournament was a triumph also for TV according to research compiled by the game’s governing body and Publicis Media Sport and Entertainment.

While the data showed that viewership in some key areas was actually down compared with the previous edition in 2014 in Brazil, the data showed that fundamentally.

An estimated 3.572 billion people watched some official broadcast coverage of the tournament, that is 51.3% of the global population aged four years and over. The average global live audience of 2018 FWC Russia was 191 million viewers, a slight 2.1% increase over the 2014 tournament average of 187 million viewers. Almost 3.3 billion viewers watched at least one minute of coverage on linear TV, up 2.2% on 2014. The research found a significant increase in the longer reach criteria, the number of viewers to have watched for at least 30 consecutive minutes went up by 27.7%.

Viewer retention — that is the percentage of viewers who watched one minute of coverage and then went on to watch for a longer period — was up significantly on 2014. 81.2% of viewers who watched one minute went on to watch for at least 20 minutes (vs. 66.8% in 2014), whilst 76.4% watched for at least 30 (v. 61.1% in 2014).

There were also an estimated 309.7 million people who did not watch coverage in home but did see coverage on digital platforms, in public viewing areas or in bars & restaurants. This represented an uplift of 9.5% on the linear TV audience.

The final between France and Croatia was not surprisingly the most-watched game in the tournament being seen live by 1.12 billion people. 884.37 million of these were in-home TV viewers and 231.82 million out-of-home and/or digital-only viewers.

The FIFA survey also showed that regionally, Asia consumed the most coverage with 10.66 billion viewer hours. Just over two fifths of regional consumption derived from China, with a further 50% of the total produced in just six territories, namely Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, India, Korea Republic and Thailand. Europe produced the second-highest consumption overall with 9.67 billion viewer hours. The region actually produced more live match consumption than Asia (7.92 billion viewer hours v. 7.80 billion), reflecting more favourable kick-off times for the region.

Just over a quarter (26.2%) of consumption was produced by broadcasters in the Americas, compared with 43.5% of total coverage hours. Brazil accounted for 31.3% of hours consumed across the two regions. Globo, the free-to-air channel in Brazil, enjoyed by far the highest average audiences of any channel, with the average hour netting 23.7 million viewers. Channel One Russia was second with 14.3 million.