Television scores best for watching World Cup soccer

Football fans in 11 countries, including Ireland, were surveyed to discover how they will follow the matches during the

World Cup

:

63 per cent will watch on TV;

48 per cent will use their smartphone to watch/follow the games;

39 per cent of viewers will do both at the same time:

20 per cent will watch two games at once – one on their TV, one on their mobile

The survey was conducted by IAB, an international representative body for online advertising. It also asked respondents in the countries – which comprised Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Britain and the United States – if they would be prepared to pay for World Cup video content. Sixty-eight per cent said Yes (63 per cent in Ireland).

The high figure perhaps indicates that long experience of having to pay per view has made football fans a rare breed of media consumers – people already well used to paying for what they consume.

More than a third of the sports fans surveyed say they do not ignore mobile advertising – 37 per cent of them click on a mobile advertisement daily, which would seem to indicate they are ripe for targeting by brands. However that is only, according to IAB Ireland, “if ads offer relevance, deals and are of a fun/entertaining nature”.

World Cup fans are a sociable lot, with 90 per cent of them (87 per cent in Ireland) intending to share their World Cup experience on Twitter, Facebook and the rest.

Mobile is strong but football fans still love their big screens and RTÉ’s live coverage is delivering impressive numbers – 565,000 viewers watched the England v Italy match on Saturday night, that’s up on the last World Cup when 457,000 tuned in for England’s opening group match.

Considering how many more viewing options people have now compared to just four years ago – particularly in terms of smartphone ownership – it is an impressive win for TV. Even more so when you consider that the match kicked off at 11pm.

Over on ITV and BBC, the pundits are getting a kicking from the fans – with complaints about Phil Neville’s boring commentary style and the difficulty of understanding Brazilian player Juninho and Italian defender Fabio Cannavaro.

Not so on RTÉ, which has stuck with its outspoken panel of Johnny Giles, Liam Brady and Eamon Dunphy under the baton of Bill O Herlihy, as well as some regulars and international signings Dietmar Hamann, Ossie Ardiles – and the still hilarious Après Match crew.

It is a mix that on Saturday – where live coverage went from 3.30pm to 4am – brought in an average viewership of 300,000.