What Is the Estimated Size of the Streaming Audience for the World Cup in the US?

In order to venture a guess (and this is just a guess–there’s not a lot of data out there on this), let’s start with Nielsen’s estimate that 120 million people in the US watched at least some portion of the 2006 World Cup on TV.

Let’s assume that the TV audience for the 2010 Cup will be bigger. Why? Because (1) soccer has grown in popularity in the US in the past four years; (2) the US team is expected to be stronger this year, and its opening match matchup against England will be the highest profile World Cup game the US has played since it faced Germany in 2002; and (3) because the marketing machine is spinning in a higher gear than the last time around.

The cumulative audience for the World Cup was about 120 million in 2006, I expect this year it might be on the order of 150 million. And I’m going to assume that some 5% of the total viewing audience will watch games online. This percentage is a bit higher than for the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament (which was around 3.2% streaming) for good reason. The World Cup appeals to an extremely broad-based constituency, many of whom are foreigners whose employers won’t “get” what the fuss is about. These folks will do anything to catch their games, even if it means taking an extended lunch and watching on a laptop at a local café. (In England, where many employers do “get” it, this has already caused problems.)

It helps that all games take place before or during business hours in the US. There will be no evening games, so that will push more of the audience toward streaming solutions.

So what’s the estimated size of the online audience for the World Cup? I expect the total US online streaming video audience will be somewhere around 7.5 million for this year’s event. Keep in mind that it’s not an official estimate — and it doesn’t count the tens of millions who will catch post-game streams and highlight reels on YouTube, ESPN.com, Univision.com, FIFA.com and other entities that will carry these clips.

Still, the implications are interesting when compared to other sporting events in the US, like the NCAA tournament. Contrary to popular belief that Americans generally don’t care for soccer, it appears that the World Cup will be watched by double the number of US viewers who watched March Madness streaming live on CBS.com this year. According to Nielsen, just 3.2 million unique viewers watched the NCAA tournament streaming online this year — less than half the number who are expected to watch the World Cup in the same fashion.

One potential factor that might limit the World Cup streaming audience is the nature of the digital rights. ESPN/ABC and Univision have English- and Spanish-language broadcast rights, respectively, and those rights extend to the Web. ESPN’s streaming service, ESPN3.com, is available only on ISPs that are affiliated with ABC and its parent company, Disney. That includes Comcast, AT&T and Verizon but does not include Time Warner Cable and others. So many fans in entire swaths of the country will not be able to watch live streams in English even if they’re willing to pay. They’ll have to either watch on Univision.com or go underground.