"Actually, the conditions were favorable to achieve new quota records at this football World Cup," says Kerstin Niederauer-Head.

She is CEO of AGF Videoforschung, which has been determining viewer numbers on behalf of many German television stations since 1988.

“Television usage tends to be higher during the dark months of the year than in the summer, due to the tight economy people are also likely to be going out less this winter, and since there weren’t any public viewing crowds that would otherwise fall out of our data, we would have been more likely increases expected.”

Miguel de la Riva

volunteer

  • Follow I follow

Not only did the World Cup in Qatar not set any new records – on the contrary, for the first time there was a noticeable decline in spectator interest at a World Cup.

“Against the background of the favorable starting conditions, this is a remarkable result.

We are dealing with changes in media usage behavior that we don't otherwise know about," says the reach researcher.

Axel Balkausky, sports coordinator at ARD, can confirm this: "Compared to the last World Cup, we have lost around a third of the viewers on classic linear television, both in absolute numbers and in relative market shares." The use of online live streams, the is now very popular across all age groups and reaches up to two and a half million people at its peak, cannot compensate for this decline.

German Aus no sufficient explanation

Even the early departure of the German national team is not a sufficient explanation for the waning interest.

It is true that Balkausky states that over the past few years, even in normal international matches of the DFB selection, interest has waned along with sporting performance.

But on the one hand fewer people than ever tuned in to the preliminary round matches with German participation.

And on the other hand, spectator interest in the final round matches was higher at previous tournaments, even without a German team.

Finally, the decline in the classic ratings cannot be explained by the use of pay-TV offers such as Magenta, as Niederauer-Head explains: “Magenta usage is not taken into account in the unofficial AGF ratings card because we Telekom has not commissioned.

For quality assurance reasons, however, we also measure these offers and can thus rule out the possibility that such a large number of viewers follows the World Cup on Magenta that we would actually be dealing with the same or greater interest.

After keeping a low profile for a long time, the Telekom offshoot recently expressed itself in a balance sheet.

Accordingly, the broadcaster recorded growth for itself compared to Euro 2020.

With a peak of one and a half million spectators, it is well below the two-digit million figures that were previously seen at World Cup matches with German participation.

Niederauer-Head concludes: "So far we have clearly had lower spectator numbers - something that we have never experienced at a sporting event of this magnitude."