World Cup TV figures soar

TV audiences for the FIFA World Cup in host country Germany have rocketed by 51 percent on the 2002 event, according to the latest research commissioned by Infront.

Figures produced by research consultancy Sponsorship Intelligence, on behalf of FIFA's marketing partner, have also collated overnight viewing figures from 45 key markets.

Germany’s first four matches scored a combined TV audience on German public service broadcasters ZDF and ARD of 87.6m, which gives an average of 21.9m per match. This compares with an average 14.5m who followed each of the first four matches in 2002. It is also up on France 1998 – staged in Europe in the same time zone.

In 1998, the first four German games attracted a cumulative audience of 85.5m, on average half a million viewers fewer per match than in 2006.

Also in Europe, the television rating for the live coverage of the Holland v Argentina match broadcast on NL2 was the highest of any broadcast so far – 80.3 percent.

In England, 16.3m UK television viewers watched England's first sudden death match against Ecuador, broadcast live by the BBC. The figure equated to a 79 percent audience share.

Elsewhere, the international appeal of the tournament was illustrated by the fact that more people in China tuned into the England v Paraguay game than the entire populations of England and Paraguay.

The match was broadcast in China on CCTV-5 at 9pm in the evening, attracting 62.9m viewers, with 22.3 percent of China’s television viewers at that time choosing to watch the match.