Do you often wonder, “How many individuals watch the World Cup?” We frequently hear that no other athletic event attracts as many viewers to online sports betting as the World Cup. To get the answer, we must first consider what they typically do.
Billions of individuals see the tournament. In reality, FIFA predicted in 2018 that more than one billion people worldwide watched the World Cup Final between France and Croatia. Of course, the World Cup final is one of the most watched football matches ever.
The average live audience was around 517 million concurrent watchers. This is actually a lower average than the previous two World Cup Finals. In 2010, an average of 531 viewers in South Africa witnessed Spain overcome the Netherlands in extra time.
Four years later, Argentina and Germany played before a global television audience of around 562 million.
Tour de France is the greatest competition in terms of viewership. There is one constant on the list of each country’s most-watched television broadcasts, even though opinions differ over which competition attracts the most people.
Several large nations, like France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Brazil, have a substantial amount of FIFA World Cup exposure. However, how does this year’s World Cup compare?
2022 The Year Of Record Breakers
The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 continues to attract record-breaking television audiences in several global regions.
On Sunday, November 27th, the group match between Japan and Costa Rica averaged 36.37 million viewers in Japan.
This topped the audience of their tournament-opening comeback against Germany by over 10 million viewers and was 74% greater than the average home group stage audience of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
On November 24th in the Korean Republic, 11.14 million people witnessed the opening match versus Uruguay.
The broadcast attracted 97% more viewers than the average for group-stage matches at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil and 18% more than in Russia in 2018.
Fans in Europe have also come in large numbers for the second round of group-stage matches.
On Sunday, November 28th, 65 percent of Spanish television viewers witnessed La Roja play Germany in possibly one of the most eagerly awaited games of the tournament.
The combined audience for broadcast on La1 and GOL MUNDIAL was 11.9 million, surpassing the record for any 2018 FIFA World Cup group stage game.
Some FIFA Fanatic Records!
Incredibly, nearly three-quarters (76.6%) of Dutch television viewers watched Cody Gakpo’s incredible goal in their 1-1 tie with Ecuador. This was the largest television audience in the country in 2022, surpassing any 2018 FIFA World Cup match.
Les Bleus’ match against Denmark was televised on TF1 in France. In the final minutes of the contest, when Kylian Mbappe scored the game-winning goal, the program’s average audience of 11.6 million viewers peaked at 14.56 million.
This was the greatest peak of the tournament thus far in France, surpassing the 14 million people that watched France’s opening encounter against Australia.
The Spanish Madness
On November 28th, Portugal’s match against Uruguay had the largest television audience ever for a FIFA World Cup match in Portugal.
5.35 million Portuguese people watched at least one minute of coverage as the squad advanced to the knockout round.
The telecast garnered a 69.5% audience share as A Selecço won their second consecutive game at the competition.
Over 80% of the Portuguese television audience has already viewed at least one minute of coverage.
In addition, the United States’ passion for the beautiful game continues to increase as new records are continually broken.
The match between the United States and England on November 25th was the most-watched men’s football match ever on US television, with a peak viewership of 19.65 million people on FOX.
Telemundo’s Spanish-language coverage of the game was the second-most-watched group-stage match featuring the United States in Spanish-language history.
The next day, when Argentina and Mexico played in a pivotal Group C encounter, the Telemundo coverage in the United States was the most-watched Group Level match in Spanish-language history in the country, and the second-most-watched game of any stage, ever.
In contrast, coverage of the same match in Mexico attracted a nationwide viewership of 20.96 million people.
Three networks airing the game had a total share of 67.9%. This was greater than the highest combined rating for any 2018 FIFA World Cup match in the area.
In addition, the average Canadian audience for their must-win match against Croatia was 4.33 million, with a 68.4% share.
This was about 17% higher than Canada’s opening match and roughly 12% higher than the area’s highest aggregate audience for the 2018 tournament.
South American fans are, as expected, as devoted as ever to the sport. In Argentina, the average viewership for the two-time FIFA World Cup champions’ decisive match against Mexico was 8.48 million, resulting in an astounding 81.3% audience share.
The attendance was 5% more than both their opening encounter against Saudi Arabia and the average audiences for their group stage games of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
