To end the epic journey that was the World Cup in South Africa, The Nielsen Company has revealed just how popular the tournament’s organizer – FIFA – was around the world and provides insight as to who should sponsor the next cup…
During June, the FIFA website proved to be most popular in Brazil – visited by 7.0% of Brazilians online, or 2.8 million people.
In the UK, 2.7 million people (or 6.9%) were logging on the FIFA website, despite the disappointing result from the England squad.
Despite their tournament ending on the 25th June, Switzerland followed with 5.6% of Swiss people online (0.25 million people) visiting FIFA’s site, probably driven by the team’s opening round victory over eventual winners Spain.
The FIFA site offers versions in English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Arabic and International Sign, but not Italian or Japanese. Despite this, 4.8% of Italians online (1.2 million people) still visited the site during June. The lack of the local language did prove too much of an obstacle in Japan where only 0.1% of Japanese people visited the site.
Not only did the FIFA website have the biggest footprint in Brazil but it also witnessed the most engaged audience – Brazilian visitors averaged almost 28 minutes on the site during June.
In the US, although the site had a relatively low penetration among countries under Nielsen’s measurement (2.8% of Americans online visited the site) the US actually provided the most total visitors to the site (5.4 million people) and, following Brazilians, the US was the most engaged audience at almost 22 minutes per visitor for the month.
In all the markets, except one, the FIFA website – when compared to the overall internet audience in each country – was overly-weighted towards male visitors and struggled to attract females.
The site had the most male-dominated audience in Brazil (71% male) and Australia (70%), while in Italy (67%) and Spain (66%) it also had at least-two thirds male visitors.
Germany was the only country in which the site had more female (54%) than male visitors (46%).
In all the countries under measurement, the FIFA website was overly-weighted towards 18-49 year olds – particularly the 18-34 segment – while it struggled on attracting visitors under 18 and those over 50.
In most of the countries, the majority of FIFA’s online audience was over 35 years old – particularly in France where almost 60% were over 35. Only in Spain (47%) and Brazil (34%) did the site have fewer visitors over 35 compared to those under 35.
So there you have it. Going by Nielsen, if you are a brand that is looking to target males over the age of 35 years, perhaps a World Cup sponsorship package should be on the cards for 2014…