The World Cup by the Numbers

There’s nothing like rooting for your team. Whether you’re at home, with friends and family at a bar or restaurant, or on the go, major sporting events bring people together in a special way.

And for Americans, the big draw isn’t just limited to football, baseball, basketball, and hockey games anymore. If you take a look at exactly who is watching the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, how they’re watching and why, the numbers show that soccer—or rather international football’s signature event–has firmly arrived as a force to be reckoned with in the U.S. market, with viewership crushing the 2010 numbers.

Here’s a quick look at the numbers:

  • People have flocked to their televisions to watch the World Cup putting the event on-track to pass the South African viewership of 3.2 billion.
  • So far, 200 million people have generated 815 million Facebook interactions and 300 million Tweets during the Group Stage.
  • Fans have watched more than 1.2 billion minutes of YouTube ads.

Numbers that big lead to some obvious questions. Exactly who is watching the 2014 FIFA World Cup? How are they watching? Where are they watching and why are they watching?

Here are some highlights from our World Cup research: 

  • 55% of US respondents state that they will be watching the World Cup with their family, while 78% of US Hispanics plan to make viewing of theWorld Cup a family event.
  • 54% of US Hispanics state “experiencing an international event” as a key motivator for following the World Cup, while 42% of all Americans follow plan to follow the World Cup as a way to “support their national team”.

Even though a lot more American eyes are focused on Brazil right now, not everyone has confidence that soccer will continue to be a major draw in the U.S. outside of the World Cup, despite the 2014 FIFA World Cup’s obvious rise in stature.

David Kahn, writing for Bloomberg View, says that soccer may be having a “moment,” but don’t expect droves of fans at Major League Soccer games anytime soon.

He likens the level of competition in the FIFA World Cup to following the Dream Team—the U.S. men’s basketball team that crushed the competition after professional athletes were allowed to compete in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona—which sparked an international basketball craze that today feeds the National Basketball Association with players and built up the level of play around the world.

“That’s the concern for MLS: Now that more and more Americans have been exposed to phenomenal soccer, will they buy into a U.S. soccer league that is markedly inferior, or will they clamor for more of England’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga?” Kahn writes.

Basketball giant Kareem Abdul-Jabar agrees, but for a different reason. “To the average American used to the hustle of basketball, the clash of titans in football, the suspense of the curve ball in baseball, or the thrilling crack of the slapshot in hockey, the endless meandering back and forth across the soccer field looks less like strategy and more like random luck,” he wrote in a June 30 piece on Time.com. “It lacks drama. Of course, that’s not true at all, but that is certainly the perception.”

For marketers, it’s clear the World Cup now presents a huge opportunity, but whether this transforms for big league soccer in the U.S. into a new platform to be reckoned with, the answer still appears to be wait and see.

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