GWI Audience Report: World Cup Fans

World Today

With the huge buzz surrounding the World Cup, this report provided by Global web index places a spotlight on those who say they’ll be tuning in for matches.

The audience are divided into two groups: Real-Time Fans, who claim they’ll watch as many games as possible; and Part-Time Fans, those who say that they’re either mildly interested and will watch a few matches, or that they’ll be tuning in when they can but won’t be following progress on a constant basis. The report compares these two groups to those who are Not Interested – whether because they simply don’t like football or because they weren’t even aware that the World Cup was happening.

Drawing on the research program across 32 countries and nearly 90% of the internet audience, it look specifically at:
– The demographic breakdown of World Cup fans
– Their attitudes, interests and digital behaviors
– Usage and mobile internet
– The ways in which World Cup viewers say they interact with brands
– Their favored social networking platforms and activities

Clients can explore the digital characteristics of this group further by building an audience in PRO Platform – tailoring any element of the definition as required.

Please note: all data is taken from our Q1 2014 wave of research. Fieldwork was completed in March 2014, with a global sample size of 42,000 adults aged 16-64.

This year’s world cup is expected to be the most social media event in sports history.

That’s bigger than this year’s Sochi Olympics or the U.S. football championship, known as the Super Bowl. During the tournament’s first week alone, Facebook recorded 459 million posts, likes and comments.

That’s more than the Academy Awards, the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl combined.

Facebook says 10 million people commented on Sunday’s match between the U.S. and Portugal.

To put that in perspective, that’s equal to the entire  population of Portugal.

And there were 8 million Tweets about the match while it was happening,

Of those 1.5 million were about Portuguese striker Ronaldo.

Compare that to 185 million interactions about the Super Bowl, 120 million for the Sochi Winter Olympics and 25.4 million for the Academy Awards in March, and you realize the World Cup inspired more activity than the other three combined.

Most recently, Facebook says 10 million people had 20 million interactions during the U.S. Portugal match. According to Twitter Data, there were 8 million tweets about the match while it was happening.

By itself, that’s no match for the 24.9 million tweets during this year’s Super Bowl (including pregame, halftime and postgame). But, taken as a whole, the World Cup, bolstered by its massive international appeal and growing popularity in the U.S., is becoming the biggest social-media event in the medium’s short history.

The Cup’s opening match, between host country Brazil and Croatia, spurred 12.2 million tweets alone — possibly not surprising when you consider that soccer-crazy Brazil has the fifth most Twitter users in the world, behind the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. CCTV’s Jason Mander reports. 

GWI Audience Report: World Cup Fans

This year's world cup is expected to be the most social media event in sports history.