40% of Fifa World Cup's desi TV audience were women

MUMBAI: The recently concluded Fifa World Cup saw Indian women lap up football like never before with more than 40% of the overall television viewership coming from female audiences. The month-long tournament, one of the biggest sporting events in the world, saw 55 million Indians tune in to watch the matches, out of which 32 million were male while 23 million were women, according to data made available to TOI by the official broadcaster of the tournament Sony Six, sourced from TAM.
The 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa brought in 63 million viewers with a bulk of the matches having been played during Indian primetime. "Football has very clearly emerged as the second biggest sports to advertise on and the world cup proved it as more youth and women came on board. Had the matches been telecast earlier, the reach could have easily touched the 100-million mark," Rohit Gupta, president at Multi Screen Media (MSM), which owns the Sony channels, told TOI.
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The broadcaster sold ten-second advertising spots at about Rs 2.5 lakh, which went up to Rs 5 lakh for the last four matches. To put things in perspective, an India cricket one-day international match costs as much as Rs 2-3 lakh for ten seconds, signalling how football is closing in on ODI cricket rates. IPL and other twenty20 matches command much higher rates though.
Sony is expected to have garnered around Rs 120 crore in advertising revenue according to industry estimates. However, Gupta did not confirm the number.

As far as reach goes, the English Premier League telecast between August last year to May this year clocked 26 million in reach, according to data provided by Sony, sourced from TAM. "What helped push up the reach, despite not very favourable timings, this time around was the multi-screen viewing with the youth tweeting, whatsapping while watching the games. The sense of engagement and buzz was extraordinary," said Anita Nayyar, CEO (India & South Asia) at Havas Media. Nayyar bought media for clients like Xolo Mobile, Hyundai and LG during the tournament.
Media planners said the youth and women appeal is helping get football the traction that advertisers look for in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Nandini Dias, CEO, Lodestar UM, said the agency's media buy for Amul turned out to be a great one for the brand. "Amul was one of the two brands to have advertised throughout the world cup and the returns were outstanding having done a post-tournament analysis. Also, there was great cost efficiency of having come on right at the beginning," Dias said. Besides Amul, Lodestar bought airtime for Tata Docomo and Tata Motors.
Sony's Gupta said with the upcoming Euro 2016 and world cup in 2018, the ad rates for at least the big footballing properties are now getting established in India. "Our challenge this time was to not sell cheap as the idea was to build the platform from here on. Now we have been able to establish the ad rates for the sport," he said.