FIFA World Cup Attracts Record Breaking TV Audiences
The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ is attracting record-breaking TV audiences across multiple markets.
In Japan, the group game between Japan and Costa Rica on Sunday 27 November drew an average audience of 36.37 million viewers.
This surpassed the audience of their incredible comeback against Germany in their tournament opener by over 10 million and was 74% higher than the average domestic group stage audience during the FIFA World Cup in 2018.
In South Korea, 11.14 million people watched their tournament opener against Uruguay. The broadcast saw a 97% increase in TV audience compared to the average for group stage matches at the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in 2014; 18% higher than at Russia 2018.
65% of people watching TV in Spain saw La Roja take on Germany in one of the most anticipated games of the tournament. 11.9 million was the combined audience across coverage on La1 and GOL MUNDIAL, exceeding the audience of any group stage game for the FIFA World Cup in 2018.
In France, Les Bleus’ encounter with Denmark averaged an audience of 11.6 million viewers, the programme audience peaked in the closing minutes of the match as 14.56 million watched Kylian Mbappe score a late winner.
In addition, interest in the beautiful game in the United States continues to grow with new records continuously being broken. The English-language coverage of USA’s encounter with England was the most watched men’s football match on US television ever, with a peak audience of 19.65 million viewers on FOX.
NBC-Universal’s Spanish-language coverage of the match on Telemundo was the second-most watched FIFA World Cup group stage match featuring a United States team in Spanish-language history.
The following day, as Argentina and Mexico met in a crucial Group C tie, the Telemundo broadcast in the US was the most-watched FIFA World Cup Group Stage match in Spanish-language history in the country, and the second largest of any stage, ever.
In addition, the average audience in Canada for their make-or-break tie with Croatia was 4.33 million, with a share of 68.4%. This was 17% higher than Canada’s opening match and 12% higher than the top combined audience in the territory for the 2018 tournament.
