New technology and fan-friendly scheduling is set to result in the 2014 World Cup generating a record global television audience, according to Fifa’s director of television Niclas Ericson.
Research from world football’s governing body said 909.6 million television viewers watched at least one minute of the 2010 World Cup final at home. Some 619.7 million people also watched at least 20 consecutive minutes of Spain’s 1-0 extra-time win over the Netherlands in Johannesburg.
More than 3.2 billion people watched live coverage of the South Africa tournament for a minimum of one minute. The average official rating was 188.4 million for each match. The 2014 World Cup kicks off in Brazil on June 12 and Ericson is optimistic that new landmarks can be set.
“We have some reasons to say the audience will increase,” he told the Reuters news agency. “We worked very hard on the match schedule and the times we have now, we think will be very good for the football fan. We think we have very good kick off times for Africa, the Middle East and Europe and will continue to grow the audience there. And as the World Cup is in the Americas, we'll have even better figures from there than ever before. Asia has grown very fast in term of viewers and rights fees and I believe that even on paper before the event it looks extremely good to break the records we have.”
Ericson said for the first time Fifa has a rights contract in place with every country or territory. “We know that an opening match featuring Brazil is going to be record-breaking across the world because it is Brazil,” he added.
Three matches in Brazil will be shot and broadcast in 4K and nine in 8K resolution as part of tests by broadcasters. “We can use the World Cup to drive advances in television technology because with a large platform of broadcasters, anything we want to try, we immediately have reasonable economics around it,” Ericson said.
“We did 3D in South Africa and quickly had a number of broadcasters around the world working with us and participating in the project. For this World Cup we are working with 4K and 8K, and immediately we have broadcasters who say they want to be part of it.”