On Monday, the Reliance-backed Viacom18, the official broadcaster of the Fifa World Cup, said over 110 million viewers had consumed its football content on JioCinema during the month-long tournament. JioCinema, part of the Viacom18 network, was live-streaming the tournament for free, a first for a broadcaster in India. The World Cup was also broadcast on the Sports18 TV channel.
Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) data, sourced from the industry last week, had indicated that the first 58 matches of the World Cup had attracted nearly 47 million television viewers. The viewership numbers included the quarterfinal matches played between December 9 and 11.
While final television viewership numbers including for the semi-finals and final will be released later by BARC, Viacom18 said India was one of the highest digital viewership markets for the Fifa World Cup.
If figures of TV (Sports18) and digital (JioCinema) were combined, the broadcaster said, 40 billion minutes of viewing time was registered during the tournament. JioCinema also remained the most-downloaded free app on iOS and Android through the tournament, with over 1.1 billion downloads.
On Monday, Viacom18 Sports CEO Anil Jayaraj said that the Fifa World Cup viewership had demonstrated the power of digital. “The preference viewers and fans have shown to consume their favourite events on digital is incredible,” he said.
“We promised to give consumers easy access to the world-class presentation of the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022, and on the back of that, the tournament became the most-watched global sports event where India has not participated,” he said.
Over 50 brands across e-commerce, banking, financial services, auto, fashion, hospitality, and fintech advertised on television and digital throughout the tourney, Viacom18 said.
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