Ratings for CBC’s broadcast of the 2014 FIFA World Cup continue to beat 2010 levels on both the broadcast and digital platforms.
Heading into the semi-finals, 30 million Canadians had watched World Cup coverage across all of CBC’s platforms. Across digital platforms alone, 5.8 million, or one in six, Canadians had watched games live, logging over 10 million hours.
In addition, the Bell-sponsored CBC FIFA World Cup app has now surpassed 1 million downloads. The app offers users six viewing angles on every live match, highlights and integration with Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
This year’s round of 16 games averaged an audience of 2.1 million, which is a 46% increase from the last World Cup in 2010. The pubcaster saw similar audience numbers in the quarter-finals, an increase of 18% from 2010. That increase is 27% for viewers between the ages of 25 to 54.
The high watermark for ratings during a knockout match this year is 2.7 million, hit by both the round of 16 match between USA and Belgium on July 1 and the quarter-final match between Netherlands and Costa Rica on July 5. They both fell just short of the highest-rated match of the tournament so far, which remains the group stage match between England and Italy that drew 2.8 million viewers on June 14.
This weekend, CIBC’s Soccer Nation tour finishes in Toronto with a viewing party outside CBC’s headquarters. It will feature musical performances and an outdoor broadcast of the final World Cup games.
Yesterday’s 7-1 blowout by Germany of host country Brazil broke Twitter’s record for the most-tweeted sports game, registering 35.6 million tweets worldwide. After Germany scored their fifth goal, the social network was seeing over 580,000 tweets per minute.
Data released by Twitter before the start of the tournament says that Brazil is the most-followed team by Canadians on the social network, and three Brazilian players were amongst Canada’s most discussed online.
Another trend Twitter has noticed is how usage can sometimes mimic the home viewing experience: on penalty kicks, the website almost falls silent as a player sets himself up, followed by a surge in the number of tweets after the shot has been taken.
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