Well last year Nielsen released some numbers about MLS as part of their Face of Sports report, and we posted them for you to read and they were very focused on MLS. Well this year Nielsen has released their numbers and when it comes to soccer they focused on the World Cup.
The first thing they looked at however is why sports are so important to advertisers (and in turn sponsors), as pointed out in this graphic, the numbers of high income folks watching sports is incredible:
Perhaps even more impressive is that the World Cup final had higher ratings than the World Series, the NBA Finals, and even the Super Bowl. The most surprising is that the Stanley Cup was the most popular among those who make over $100K a year.
after the jump, more numbers (all soccer):
So 24.3 million tuned into the World Cup Final in the US making it the most watched soccer game in US history, 111.6 million US viewers watched at least 6 minutes (kinda a random number) of the 2010 World Cup on either English or Spanish language networks, a 22% increase over 2006.
The top local markets for English broadcasts were:
- Miami - Ft. Lauderdale
- New York
- Washington DC
- San Diego
- San Fran - Oakland - San Jose
- Norfolk - Portsmth - Newport
- Las Vegas
- West Palm Beach - Ft Pierce
- Boston
- Austin
- Miami - Ft. Lauderdale
- Los Angeles
- Houston
- Las Vegas
- Dallas - Ft. Worth
- San Antonio
- New York
- San Fran - Oakland - San Jose
- Austin
- Phoenix
