Television, The Favourite Mode To Follow The FIFA World Cup: Nielsen
World Cup Sponsors Score Huge Global Brand Awareness Sponsorship Investment Pays Off - Even Before Kick-Off
Tweet-- The FIFA World Cup, the most popular sports event in the world, is upon us again. Indians love television when it comes to following the FIFA World Cup according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey. Eight in ten (81%) Indians would follow the live telecast of the game on the Television, 58 percent would follow the game in the Newspaper, and a half (51%) would watch the games in delayed broadcasts & highlights on TV.
Online articles/ reports appear to be the next most preferred mode of following the game with 35 percent votes. Internet on mobile phones is also viewed as an option to keep one up-to-date with the matches (34%). Other modes of following the game are Online video clips (30%), Online streaming (28%), Radio (20%), Online blogs/chat rooms/forums (18%), Video clips and Applications on mobile phones (both 14%), and Podcasts (6%).
"It is interesting to note that increasingly Indians are using the digital medium to following the sports and this could be a great opportunity for advertisers," said Piyush Mathur, President, India, The Nielsen Company.
According to the Nielsen Survey, 15 percent Indians surveyed would like to catch all the action Live from the stands and intend to travel to South Africa to watch the games.
Out of the many methods, if Indians had to choose one main method to follow the Cup then it would be live broadcast on Television, 67 percent Indians would mainly use this method to watch the games, followed by delayed broadcasts & highlights on TV (7%) and Newspaper (7%).
Controversial football rules
Passion for the game aside, many a times football matches get embroiled in controversies on decisions taken by the match referees. As per the Nielsen survey 73 percent Indians believe referees should be allowed to use television replays to make decisions during football matches. The world is at a lesser agreement on this, 65 percent consumers globally think that replays should be used for making decisions.
More than half the Indians (52%) consider a penalty shoot out the best way to decide a drawn match, 23 percent consider it inappropriate. Globally 35 percent consumers consider a penalty shoot out a good way to decide a drawn match.
A spotlight for brands
If it's a popular game then sponsors can't be far behind. Sponsors of the World Cup are generating huge brand awareness through their association with the tournament - especially in countries where passion for the beautiful game is strongest.
When Indians were asked on who they think were the sponsors of FIFA World Cup, 39 percent Indians voted for Adidas, 30 percent Indians think that Coca-Cola are the sponsors of the game and 26 percent believe Castrol to be the sponsors amongst others.
"Even before the first teams take to the ground in South Africa, it's clear that the biggest investors in World Cup sponsorship are the ones most strongly associated with the event in consumers' minds. And the bigger the interest in football, the greater the public's recognition of who the official sponsors are," added Mathur.
Adidas, Coca-Cola, Visa and Sony - four of the six top-level FIFA Partner sponsors - are the brands most strongly associated worldwide with the World Cup, and there's high recognition of the involvement of World Cup sponsors McDonald's, Emirates, Castrol and Continental.
The brand that's providing the official World Cup footballs, Adidas, is the one that consumers most strongly link with the event. Globally, 41% of people know that the sportswear giant is a main sponsor for the FIFA World Cup, but in football-mad Latin America awareness level rises to 52 percent, and up to 54 percent in Asia-Pacific, where 70% of Chinese and 49% of Vietnamese know that the sporting giant is a sponsor.
Nearly one in four people (22%) globally named Sony as a World Cup sponsor, rising to 26% in Asia Pacific and 33% in Latin America. One in four global consumers also named McDonald's as another Cup supporter, with higher awareness again among Asia-Pacific consumers (24 percent) and Latin Americans (29%).
While the cost of becoming a sponsor runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, the anticipated returns on investment make sponsorship of the world's most-watched sporting event hugely appealing. Adidas has been a FIFA partner since 1970 and as well as being involved in the South African event, it has already signed up to the next World Cup, in 2014.
Globally FIFA World Cup sponsors have been leveraging their association with the event in the months leading up to the finals, making strong use of the internet and mobile apps to engage consumers. Coca-Cola's campaign includes an online campaign, called Longest Celebration, which invites users to upload their most imaginative goal celebrations. Budweiser is running an online Big Brother-style reality show, Bud House, in which one fan from each of the 32 countries in the finals lives in a house in Cape Town. Castrol has launched mobile apps for rating players' skills and predict the outcome of the finals, and McDonald's has an online World Cup predictor using fans' knowledge from around the world to forecast winners, round by round.
About the Nielsen Global Online Survey
The Nielsen Global Online Survey was conducted between March 8 and March 26, 2010 and polled over 27,000 consumers in 55 countries throughout Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America. The sample has quotas based on age and sex for each country based on their Internet users, and is weighted to be representative of Internet consumers.
Notes to Editor
About The Nielsen Company
The Nielsen Company is a global information and media company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and business publications. The privately held company is active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA. For more information, please visit, www.nielsen.com.