Viewers turn online for World Cup 2010 coverage

There was a time, back in the day of three and four channel TV, when football provided many national broadcasters with their biggest audiences. In the UK, for example, the 32 million who watched the 1966 World Cup are still that country's largest ever TV audience, just ahead of the funeral of Princess Diana.

In the age of multi-channel TV and fragmented audiences, however, the World Cup can no longer deliver this kind of unified audience. This year, the most watched game in the UK attracted just over 18 million viewers.

In Asia, this trend was further compounded in 2010 by the lack of free-to-air broadcasts of the tournament in several markets, which cannibalised audiences, especially in Hong Kong and Singapore.

As a result, many viewers turned to online. In Hong Kong, for example, the response to the lack of terrestrial coverage was the sudden upsurge in interest in the previously little-known iraqgoals.net, whose broadcasts were highly popular with fans who were so desperate that they were glad to be able to watch even a stuttering stream of live games.

But it was in mainland China, where games were available free-to-air, that we saw the most significant development. According to latest data, online video broadcasts of the World Cup attracted a high of 5.5 million concurrent viewers. In 2006, that number was a flat zero.

What is really intriguing, though, is that unlike in Hong Kong, the online content was legitimate and licensed. So, even when consumers could access free coverage on CCTV, a small but significant number of viewers still saw online as a more convenient place to watch the games.

This is where the real sea change is occurring. Despite what many naysayers - myself included - predicted, digital media minus pirate content is still pulling in the viewers in China. Online video sites have in the past several months stepped up their efforts to restrict illegal uploading.

The reason is clear: only by providing a healthy and regulated environment will they be able to attract the quality programming and related ad revenue they need to survive. Once overseas content owners start to see that online can provide both the regulated environment and the big audiences - and the World Cup has to some extent been a case study for this - the real winner from South Africa could be an historic shift in TV consumption in the world's biggest broadcast market.

This article was originally published in the 29 July 2010 issue of Media.