Nearly 89% of Canadians – approximately 30.7 million people – watched some part of CBC/Radio Canada’s month-long coverage of the 2014 FIFA World Cup from Brazil, up from 86% in 2010.
Of those, approximately one in five (an estimated 6.6 million people) watched at least one live game online.
Sunday’s final between Argentina and Germany was the most-watched match of the tournament, with an average audience of more than 4.93 million viewers 2+, peaking at 7.4 million viewers during the final minute of play.
The average audience for the final game surpassed that of the 2013 Grey Cup, the 2014 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic and any game from the 2014 Stanley Cup playoffs. CBC’s rate-card price for a 30-second spot in the final was $123,000.
Saturday’s third place match between the host nation and the Netherlands was watched by an average audience of 2.3 million, a 37% increase from the 2010 third place game.
In total, more than 11.3 million Canadians watched at least part of the final match’s English-language broadcast, with nearly 500,000 watching via digital platform. Nearly 60% of all TV viewing in Canada on Sunday afternoon was to the final match.
ICI Radio-Canada Télé’s French-language broadcast of the final attracted an average of 843,00 viewers, a 48% increase from the 2010 final between Spain and the Netherlands.
An estimated 5.9 million Francophone viewers – an estimated 83% of the province’s Francophone population – watched at least some World Cup coverage on either ICA Radio-Canada Télé or TVA Sports during the tournament.
Live TV coverage of the tournament’s 64 matches averaged nearly 1.7 million viewers, a 39% increase from 2010.
Canadians also embraced CBC/Radio-Canada’s digital delivery, logging 13.5 million hours of video viewing across its various platforms. CBC’s World Cup site garnered 45% more page views and 51% more video views than in 2010, while its World Cup app was downloaded more than 1.1 million times.
An additional 30,000 Canadians participated in the CIBC Soccer Nation events across the country.
