FIFA World Cup: Breakdown of viewership statistics
Forget football, think f煤tbol.
The World Cup begins today, and all through the run-up we鈥檝e been given the聽聽that soccer has聽聽as a major sport in this country. No doubt it has made great strides in the past few decades, but before succumbing to all the hype it is worth noting that soccer鈥檚 foothold in the United States remains relatively weak.
In many countries, , in 2010. Viewership in the US, while聽, had among the lowest penetration rates.
Still, the sheer volume of humanity who viewed the 2010 games,聽, is mind-blowing:
- The average in-home viewership around the globe for each of the 64 matches in 2010 World Cup was 188.4 million. Compare that to the US-record-setting 111.5 million viewers聽.
- If you tried to watch end-to-end all 71,867 hours of television broadcasted by global networks from the 2010 World Cup, you鈥檇 be watching TV for 8.2 years straight鈥攚ithout sleep.
- The games were broadcast to 214 countries and territories, 21 more than the membership of the United Nations.
- 3.2 billion people watched part of the games from home in 2010, roughly half the world鈥檚 population at the time.
- About 909.6 million home viewers watched some of the 2010 World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain鈥攎ore than 14 times the total population of both nations, and about three times of the population of the United States.
- Out-of-home watchers of the 2010 final 鈥渓ikely pushed the total audience reach to more than 1 billion,鈥� making it the most-watched event in the history of broadcast.
FIFA expects those viewership records to fall during the games this summer, the聽.
