World Cup final moves into upper echelon

It really wasn't much of a game, unless you love yellow cards and flopping around, but Sunday's World Cup final is now among one of the most-watched events in Canadian television.

CBC drew an average of 5,131,000 viewers for Sunday's game, putting it  among most-watched sports events in the past year. The king, for now and probably all time, was the Olympic men's hockey final (16.6 million.) Four more Olympic events topped the 10 million mark in Vancouver.

In an earlier version of this post, I kind of lumped in all the Olympic stuff as one event, which was admittedly pretty goofy. Must have been the heat.

But the World Cup final is in good company, along with the Super Bowl (6,025,000) and world junior hockey final (5,3 million) following. The World Cup fits in next, just ahead of last November's Grey Cup game (5,087,000.)

Sunday's game doubled the audience of the 2006 final, with the new ratings system as always a big factor.

Here are the top-rated weekend sports shows in English Canada, according to BBM Canada overnight ratings: Overall, CBC averaged 1.265 million for its month-long coverage and probably set some sort of record with more tha 8 million live streams on its website.

1. World Cup, Netherlands vs. Spain, Sunday, CBC: 5,131,000

2. World Cup, Germany vs. Uruguay, Saturday, CBC: 1,894,000

3. CFL, Roughriders at Lions, Saturday, TSN: 1,186,000

4. CFL, Argonauts at Blue Bombers, Friday, TSN: 806,000

5. CFL, Alouettes at Eskimos, Sunday, TSN: 657,000

6. CFL, Stampeders at Tiger-Cats, Saturday, TSN: 454,000

7. MLB, Red Sox at Blue Jays, Sunday, Sportsnet: 449,000

8. MLB. Red Sox at Blue Jays, Saturday, Sportsnet: 361,000

9. Soccer, Soccer Day In Canada, Saturday, CBC: 355,000

10. Rodeo, Calgary Stampede, Saturday, CBC: 351,000

11. MLB, Red Sox at Blue Jays, Friday, Sportsnet: 311,000

12. Auto Racing, F-1 British Grand Prix, Sundady, TSN: 280,000

13. Rodeo, Calgary Stampede, Friday, CBC: 227,000

14. Equestrian, Spruce Meadows Show Jumping, Satuday, CBC: 220,000

15. Soccer, Colorado at Toronto FC, Saturday, CBC: 215,000 

Comments

[Brett S]

If you count French viewers, the Grey Cup was still ahead of what the World Cup Final and World Junior Final got. Still very impressive for the World Cup, and in 2014 the final will be in primetime as opposed to mid afternoon

[Rick Grace]

Ouch Blue Jays.
They had a huge series with the Red Sox, yet head to head on Friday night the Argos drew a half million more viewers.
But of course as some try to tell us, nobody in Toronto was in that Argos number.
Yeah right.

And the Alouette games never count the huge Francophone viewers from RDS.
I have a feeling when you combine RDS with TSN it would have been the number one CFL rated game for the week.

Overall though CFL TV ratings on TSN may top TSN's NHL ratings this year.
Yet TSN pays the NHL 50 mil, while the CFL settled for 15?
Big mistake.

[Julian]

According to most of the Canadian media though soccer isn't popular in Canada. Yet 5.816 million Canadians watched on television and another 231,649 streamed the final online. I guess the media is right no one cares about soccer in this country.

[Brett S]

Rick, the Alouettes NEVER beat Canada's team (Saskatchewan) for ratings!!!

Agreed that everyone will tell you that "all those viewers are from the west blah blah blah"....can't wait till Labour Day when traditionally CFL ratings tend to really break out! The NFL will be even more soundly beat than last year. But of course, the ratings are flawed...

[Joel]

Super Bowl beat the Grey Cup? Interesting.

[argosrbest]

Joel, the Super Bowl beat the Grey Cup only because the SB was available to 3-4 million more viewers in Canada (the reach of CTV vs TSN).

[Brett S]

That's because CFL fans start watching NFL after the Grey Cup, look at head to head numbers for both leagues, the NFL NEVER wins. If the Grey Cup went head to head against the Super Bowl it would win

[DLind]

Rick,

A) The Jays series against the Red Sox was anything but huge. The Jays have been out of the race for about a month. The games are essentially meaningless at this point.

B) The Jays had 7 games on TV that week to the Argos 1.

C) Those numbers include Bomber fans.

CFL numbers are impressive, but your comparisons are far too simplisitc. The Blue Jays play 144 more games than the Argos each season! You can't just point to head to head ratings to explain it all.

[Rick Grace]

Thats right argosrbest.
I read the actual reach is 14 million for CTV, compared to 9 million for TSN.
Another big mistake by the CFL.
Grey Cup should have been on CTV. Since CTV owns TSN.
But why it wasn't is a story for another day.

[moosy]

Unlikely the WC final in Brazil will be all in primetime for us as the scheduling caters to European TV first and most convenient time for the largest chunk of the viewing audience. With most of the major Brazilian cities 1 hour ahead of us and 3 hours behind GMT, I would guess the final would start around 3-5 pm EST.

BuT I can see a portion of the group matches in primetime especially of days when 3 matches are bing played and involves teams from the Americas and/or Asia. When the Cup was in the USA in 94, the final was in the afternoon and other than for a handful of matches, everything was scheduled in the afternoon EST.

[cichlid]

With RDS, 2009 Grey Cup had 6.1m while WC with Rad-Can was about 5.7m and Super Bowl was 6.7m with CTV & RDS.

Considering the Super Bowl is the most promoted sporting event in North America as it has become an quasi party day while the Grey Cup is not even the most promoted sporting event in Canada and the WC Final still isn't on the radar screen for many Cdns as appointment tv, the numbers achieved by the Grey Cup & the WC were excellent.

The Wc Final doubled its 06 ratings also which is helped by the new ratings system but still posted higher increases than other sports have under the new system. And for the past 3 weeks, the number 1 TV program of any genre was a WC match which is impressive since it is competing against primetime shows vs its daytime slots. And other big events, sports rarely beats entertainment tv for top spot in the ratings.

[SF]

The only CFL number there that’s disappointing is from the Stamps Ticats game, but that game was played on a Saturday afternoon in July. What were they thinking when they scheduled that game??
.
The Blue Jays’s numbers are yo-yoing all over the place this year. It looks like they’re a team people will watch if there’s nothing else on. They got killed going head to head with the Argos on Friday, and they were playing the Red Sox too. Clearly not many people are big enough fans to buy tickets to their games either.
.
Joel
The SB is a spectacle with big time acts playing at half time as well. Many non-football fans watch it for the spectacle and the half time show so it’s not really a measure of how popular NFL football is, but note that the GC beat it in any event. When you add the RDS numbers the total comes to something like 6.1 million. I just checked and here are two more very impressive numbers. 8.35 million people were watching at the end of the game, and 14 million people watched at least some part of it, so almost half the people in Canada watched some part of the GC game last year. The CFL truly is Canada’s game.

[B Rock]

argosbest ..you took the words right out of my mouth

[MikeS]

@ Brett

Brett, I don't think the french viewership was counted for the World Cup either, which was televised by Radio-Canada in Quebec.

[Tim]

Julian: "According to most of the Canadian media though soccer isn't popular in Canada. Yet 5.816 million Canadians watched on television and another 231,649 streamed the final online. I guess the media is right no one cares about soccer in this country."

Once the World Cup is over, watch the ratings for soccer drop down to their normally low levels. The WC only comes around every four years so that is why the ratings are usually high for it. The every 3.75 our of 4 years that the WC is not on, the TV ratings for soccer in North America are dismal at best. Compared to the consistent CFL ratings, the WC ratings do not mention anything at all.

[Philip]

You may be right Tim, but Julian's point about the media still stands. NBA and baseball get far more attention in Canadian sports media than their ratings merit. An F1 race at 8am (5am in BC!) can get ratings not that far off Jays baseball in prime time, much higher than non-Jays baseball, and higher than NBA, even when the Raptors are playing. Soccer, F1, and maybe even tennis and NASCAR EACH have as many, if not more, fans in Canada than the NBA yet you'll rarely ever hear them discussed seriously. (The World Cup talk with know nothings like Jeff Blair is just embarrassing to listen to). The sports media in Canada is stuck on certain types of sports no matter how poor their ratings. NHL, CFL, and I suspect NFL ratings merit the coverage, so I understand they get priority, but when even the niche NCAA gets more publicity than all soccer leagues combined, plus F1, tennis etc, you know there is something wrong with sports media in Canada.

[Julian]

Tim,
I'm aware of what you are saying, but the fact remains we constantly hear that people don't like soccer in Canada but if people didn't like the sport they wouldn't have watched the world cup. The reason why ratings are low for non world cup games is because the soccer audience is a fragmented one. If you were to add the audience of those who watch epl, la liga, serie a, bundesliga, mls etc. into a single number then the ratings would be quite substantial. The fact remains there are millions of soccer fans in the country despite what the media tells us. The world cup final ratings are double what the final was 4 years ago, which also points to the growth of the sport. Not to mention since the last world cup we have seen the arrival of TFC and will soon see MLS teams in Vancouver and Montreal as well which also shows the growth of the sport in this country.

[Josh]

Tim is right. It's also accurate to say that, for example, short-track speedskating is not popular in Canada, even though it is popular for two weeks every four years.

[Cars]

@ Rick Grace...
The 50 Mil would sure help keep more guys from leaving the CFL to join NFL Practice Rosters.

[VWater]

Why does it have to be CFL vs soccer? or any sports vs sport? Did the NHL fall when the Jays/baseball was huge in the 80s and early 90s in this market? How many hours are on a broadcast day, how many channels that can show sports. I will never understand this notion that thinking that a sport has potential of growth or even being popular that it will somehow hurt other sports. This "we vs them" attitude that goes on in sports I just don't get it. There is a recent blog question on another site that asks who are better fans TFC or Jays, My answer for me is "I like both and a fan of both"

For me these ratings show is that there is a general large soccer fan base here. A million a game (that played mostly during the day) a couple of million for weekend games and knockout round games and then almost half a dozen million people for the championship game that there was a fan base that watched and sticked around for the entire month. This isn't just "recent immigrants" these are general sports fans and general public that got into the tournament also.

The idea of dismissing it as "an immigrant sport" or only commentating on the low scoring as automatic boring, or diving (which Blair on PTS earlier this week made a great commentary on how every sport dives, even the sports we hold so precious and dear here lol) it's really not enough for a general sports fan base who I think has become smarter on the game than the talk show hosts or other media types who cover general sports issue. The media needs to get away with the "soccer is boring" comments and talk about the game with some knowledge and if it's a poor match then be critical but right now if you go around just saying the sports as a whole is boring because you can't get your head around it, then you shouldn't have a general sports job, and I'd say the same thing if u say that about hockey, football, or either of the B-balls

TFC ratings aren't going to be WC numbers, to say that is like saying that Oilers numbers should be Team Canada numbers, it's just silly but with Vancouver and Montreal coming in to MLS, which hopefully help our national presence, it will just be more of a general knowledge of the sport. I think the days the media to just dismiss it as a fringe immigrant sport is over. Hockey might always be a national sport, CFL might be the national summer attraction, But I think soccer will have to have it's place on the "grown up" table very soon along with the baseball and basketball and probably should be there already. A quick BTW, Zelk I wonder how many interviews are you getting from the mainstream when there is very strong numbers for soccer, I guess most would like to ignore these numbers.

[Joel]

I wonder what the ratings would be if they only looked at people under 25. Young, mostly newer Canadians are branching out to many different sports than ever before.

[David]

Didn't the Grey Cup get over 14 million viewers last year?. More than the Super Bore, and waaayyy a head of a sport not even played in this country?

Oh, that's right, I read there on this very site;
http://www.thestar.com/sports/football/cfl/greycup/article/732817--zelkovich-grey-cup-a-ratings-champion

"In all, more than 14 million Canadians watched part of the game, representing 43 per cent of the population. The audience peaked at 8.35 million when the game-deciding field goal was kicked."

[Mike]

David, the 14 million is everyone who watched at least 1 minute of the game, not the average audience for the telecast. It's a nice stat to throw around for PR reasons but it doesn't mean much to advertisers. Then again, the average audience doesn't mean much either but still its the only thing the sports channels seem to use.
As for the TSN vs. CTV, Grey Cup vs. Super Bowl argument again, I don't buy that it makes that much of a difference for 3 reasons.
1) Given how many sports are on cable these days, it's hard to see how even the casual fan doesn't have TSN. It's in 10 million homes and on practically every basic package, there's really no reason to not have the channel. If you don't have it, chances are you aren't too interested in sports.
2) When you include the distribution of RDS in the equation, the difference is even smaller between the 2 potential audiences.
3) PPMs make that problem in 1 irrelevant. Don't have TSN but still want to watch programming on it, go to a bar or watch at a friends house.

[Rick Grace]

Cars.
You are so correct.
If we can get the average salary to 150-200,000 then this league can start keeping and even attracting higher end NFL talent.
It will also spur more kids in Canada to take up football because the financial rewards are there.

[Joel]

It's interesting that the Grey Cup can achieve high ratings, yet people aren't going to the stadium. Argos home opener had 20,242 last night. Home opener, roof open, no other sports leagues playing, yet 20,242 (the lowest since 03) decided to show up.