On June 11, nearly 100,000 soccer fans from around the world will gather at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg to watch the opening game of the 2010 World Cup. Millions more will tune in their television sets at home. During the four weeks to follow, the world’s eyes and ears will be directed towards South Africa, following one of the world’s premier sporting events. Soccer may not be overwhelmingly popular in the United States, but on a global scale, the World Cup is the largest sporting event in terms of viewership. Collectively, more than 26 billion viewers watched the games of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany: 24.2 billion at home and 2.1 billion out of home.
For everyone involved of putting together this event — sponsors, advertisers, FIFA and the host countries — this means one thing: Major bucks exchanging hands. The 2006 World Cup in Germany was considered the most monetarily-successful to date, but the 2010 event is expected to break that record. With that in mind, we take a look at some of the main financial aspects of the World Cup: corporate sponsorships, revenues, costs, and the financial effect
Embed the above image on your site
15 Comments so far
leave a comment24 billion people huh?
you might want to check your facts pal.
Steve, the number refers to the collective number of viewers (sets of eyes, so to speak) for all games added together.
STEEEEEEEEEEEVE! COME ON STEEEEEEEEVE! REALLY STEEEEEEEEVE?
ya steve you fucking idiot stfu
@Steve.
FAIL
2.1 Billion in stadiums?? dude.. seriously you gotta check your facts!! thats 2100 MILLION ppl.. 0.3 of the world in stadiums lol
Crazy soccer, no one in the USA (except immigrants) cares about you.
I fixed it for you.
This is the world’s most practiced and most popular sport, whether you like or not, teacher2be. ESPN will be showing every game live in HD with British commentary. ***** YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CAN’T WAIT!!!!!
How tragic that this information has to be processed in a ridiculous, messy infographic because people haven’t the attention span to concentrate on the facts.
dumb article
For everyone who has been surprised by (and questions) the viewership numbers for World Cup 2006, we have now added a link to these statistics from FIFA.
Please check your facts – The Walt Disney Company does NOT own Univision.
Thanks for catcihng that, jv. We’ve corrected that error and uploaded a new image.
Here’s a bit of history from a historian :
The modern rules of football are based on the mid-19th century
efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played a
t the public schools of England.
The Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were particularly
influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association
football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting
attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools.
They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or
universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football.
Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed
by former public school pupils in 1857,] which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.
These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons’ Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemason’s Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand; the second for obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby football clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, or subsequently left the FA and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the game. These rules included handling of the ball by “marks” and the lack of a crossbar, rules which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in Australia. The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games.
“Out of home” does not mean they went at the stadium. I guess pubs could be included, but you could have a pub in your own home dude…
Please, before you ask people to check figures, try to get them right.
In a previous version of this infographic, we erroneously stated that Univision was part of the Walt Disney company. We have corrected and apologize for the error.
A Univision company spokeswoman adds the following clarification:
I would like to clarify that Univision is not part of the WD Company, and such exclusivity is for Spanish-language broadcasts in the US mainland and Puerto Rico.
And that the actual Univision deal for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups and related FIFA events was of $325 million.