Viewing figures continue to soar at 2018 FIFA World Cup

After a weekend of strong viewing figures worldwide for games airing at all times of the day, audiences on Match Day 5 of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia were strongest in the participating teams’ territories for the daytime kick-offs, while the evening match also proved to be a huge draw with the home audience.

Match Day 5: Sweden v. Korea Republic, Belgium v. Panama, Tunisia v. England

BBC1’s live coverage of England’s Group G encounter with Tunisia attracted an average audience of 13.73 million (69.2% share). Viewing peaked at 18.60 million at 20:50 local time, as England captain Harry Kane scored the dramatic late winning goal. This was the highest peak audience of 2018, beating the previous high of 13.71 million viewers for coverage of the royal wedding on BBC1 in May. It was also the highest peak for any broadcast in the UK since England v. Uruguay at the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil (20.48 million viewers). Source: BARB
Live coverage of Korea Republic’s opening match of the tournament against Sweden was aired live during prime time across three national broadcasters (SBS, KBS2 and MBC). The combined audience was 9.83 million viewers, the highest FIFA World Cup audience since Korea Republic joint hosted the tournament in 2002 and reached the semi-final against Germany. The audience for that match was 24.11 million viewers, over half of the potential audience at that time. For Monday’s game against Sweden, the combined share of viewing was 61.4% and represents 20.4% of the potential television audience in this territory. Source: Starcom Korea
1.58 million viewers watched Sweden v. Korea Republic on SVT1 (89.6% share). This was higher than any audience in Sweden for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil (for which Sweden did not qualify), but surprisingly was not the highest audience of this tournament so far: Brazil v. Switzerland, which aired in prime time (20:00 kick-off) on Sunday, 17 June was watched by 1.65 million (53.2% share). However, SVT’s digital platform received 1.52 million video views, a record in Sweden for a live-streamed event. Source: MMS/SVT
In Belgium, the combined audience for the Red Devils’ opening match against Panama across the two main regional channels was 3.51 million viewers. The broadcasts on Flemish channel EEN (2.07 million) and French channel La Une (1.44 million) achieved very impressive respective shares of 85.8% and 87.9%, the highest audiences achieved for any genre of programme in their respective regions so far in 2018. Source: EBU
These figures are preliminary and do not include digital streaming or out-of-home viewing. FIFA’s final audience report, available after the competition, will include audiences from all markets across all match days.

Anthony Nlebem reporting from St. Petersburg/Russia

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