Nearly a million Australians tune in for World Cup final, as viewers shift online

Nearly a million Australians tuned in to SBS at two o’clock in the morning to watch Lionel Messi’s Argentina win the World Cup on Monday, capping a high-rating tournament for the broadcaster boosted by the Socceroos’ historic run to the knockout stages.

An average audience of 976,000 viewers set their alarms to watch the SBS broadcast of the epic final at Lusail Stadium in Qatar, where Argentina beat France 4-2 in a penalty shootout after a gripping 3-3 draw.

Nearly a million fans in Australia watched Lionel Messi lift the World Cup after Argentina beat France at Lusail Stadium on Monday morning (AEDT).Credit:Getty

SBS managing director James Taylor said the match, one of the most dramatic in the tournament’s history, was a “fitting end to an exceptional World Cup” for the multicultural broadcaster.

Despite kicking off at 2am Australian time, the match attracted an average TV audience of 501,000, slightly less than the 600,000 who tuned in to watch France beat Croatia in the 2018 World Cup final in Russia. That match was broadcast slightly earlier, at 1am.

Significantly, almost as many people streamed the match online as watched it on TV, demonstrating a dramatic shift in viewing habits. SBS On Demand’s broadcast attracted a live audience of 389,000, while a further 86,000 watched the game after the broadcast was finished.

Hunter Fujak, a lecturer in sports management at Deakin University, said he would normally expect to see a higher proportion of viewers watching the game on delay given the 2am kick-off, but a live audience of around 900,000 showed people were willing to sacrifice some hours of sleep to witness history.

“That’s an incredible achievement for a game in that time,” he said. “I think absolutely it was a success for SBS.”

The final capped three weeks of excellent ratings for SBS which were boosted by Australia reaching the knockout stages of the World Cup for the first time since 2006. More than 1.7 million people tuned in to watch the Socceroos go down to eventual winners Argentina in the round of 16, making it the most-watched game of the tournament and the second-highest-rating SBS program of 2022.

And while Australia’s dream run captured the imaginations of millions of Australians, plenty also tuned into matches involving other nations, particularly those played in the 9pm timeslot. Around 450,000 viewers watched Costa Rica beat Japan in the group stages, while 400,000 watched Cameroon draw with Serbia.

“Australia is a football country. There’s an appetite for football in this country,” Fujak said.

“We’ve been quite focused on ratings for the Socceroos games, and that’s understandable because we’re in Australia, and they achieved incredible numbers. But if you actually zoom out and look at some of the other games … there’s some pretty highly performing games.”

Fujak said the rise of on-demand streaming only made it more difficult for the domestic league to compete with overseas tournaments for eyeballs.

“When an A-League game might get 60-70,000 viewers, and you’ve got 9pm World Cup games getting 400,000, it really puts into context where A-League sits in the preferences of football fans,” he said. “It’s the World Cup, it’s the English Premier League, it’s UEFA Champions League, and then a distant fourth is A-League.”

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