Not five million viewers
Football World Cup generates little interest on TV
11/23/2022, 11:25 am
The discussions about a television boycott of the soccer World Cup in Qatar are great before the first kick-off. Now it turns out that many Germans pull through. The first three days are weak. The game of world champion France against Australia at prime time even loses against an ARD series.
The TV ratings of Qatar’s World Cup games on free-to-air German television remain at a low level. Also on the third day of the tournament the interest is significantly lower than four years ago at the World Cup in Russia. None of the three games on Tuesday on ZDF exceeded the five million mark.
World champions France’s 4-1 win against Australia in the evening on ZDF achieved the highest value from Tuesday’s games with 4.96 million football fans and a market share of 18.4 percent. ARD “Die Kanzlei, Folge 65” had more viewers in prime time with 5.051 million.
4.14 million viewers (MA: 23.7 percent) saw Poland’s Robert Lewandowski miss a penalty in the 0-0 win against Mexico. Denmark’s goalless draw against Tunisia was also watched by 2.69 million viewers (MA: 26.9 percent) on ZDF.
The MagentaTV streaming service broadcasts all 64 World Cup games and showed the surprising 2-1 defeat of two-time world champions Argentina in the 11 a.m. game against Saudi Arabia on Tuesday exclusively for the German market. MagentaTV has not yet published the quota.
The most-watched game on German television was the opening game between hosts Qatar and Ecuador on Sunday. An average of 6.209 million people tuned in there, according to AGF video research. But these values were also well behind the last World Cup in 2018. At that time, an average of 10.01 million viewers followed the opening encounter.
After three days of broadcasting of the World Cup in Russia, there had already been games with viewer numbers over the ten million mark. The average of the preliminary round games in 2018 was over nine million for ARD and ZDF broadcasts.