FIFA World Cup: Viewers Runneth Over

I don’t care how little interest you have in football, there’s no escaping the annual hype of the Super Bowl in the U.S. This year’s game made history by becoming the most watched TV broadcast ever, with 106.5 million people tuning in. Compared to viewership of the World Cup Final, however, the Super Bowl is hardly super-sized. The final soccer match of the World Cup gets almost seven times as many viewers.

Truth is, we in the U.S., just don’t feel the FIFA fever. There are pockets of excitement here and there-- this Barney’s ad for $24 team flip flops, and chocolate soccer balls at Dean & Deluca. Not very impressive given that we consume more food on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year except Thanksgiving.

And the final match is only a small part of the entire FIFA World Cup Finals ...


Expected viewership for the month-long event of 64 games, is to be somewhere around 26 billion. That’s a lot of eyeballs.




Sources: FIFA, Nielsen