Vuvuzelas may be banned, but the call of the World Cup is louder than ever for U.S. viewers.
In the wake of strong gains for the 2010 tournament and a marked increase in soccer coverage in the time since, the 2014 games in Brazil are poised to be the biggest yet for ESPN -- though there is a natural ceiling for that growth.
"It's just never going to get to the level that it's at around the world," says Patrick Rishe, director of sports consulting firm Sportsimpacts, who calls out the rising stateside coverage as the main factor in soccer's increased profile. "We have alternatives. In a lot of countries across the world, soccer, for varying reasons, it's not competing with five to eight other sports. That's what football has become in America. People want to consume it 12 months a year, even when a season isn't taking place."
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This World Cup, which officially began Thursday with the host country facing Team Croatia in Sao Paulo, also has the natural benefit to American audiences for the time zone proximity -- with many venues just one-hour ahead of the east coast. That adjacency almost always gives the Cup's only real contemporary for U.S. audiences, the Olympics, a strong advantage.
Looking at the last World Cup, which had the comparative disadvantage of taking place in South Africa, ratings still surged 41 percent from 2006. Between ESPN, ABC and Spanish-language rights-holder Univision, more than 24 million viewers tuned into the final -- with an average 3.26 million viewers watching ESPN's coverage of the month-long affair.
Network SVP and EP of event production Jed Drake has said that expectations for ratings growth this time around are "significant," declining any precise predictions, but ESPN's World Cup story is about to end either way. The network likely most anxious to see how the next few weeks play out is Fox Sports 1.
Fox Sports secured the English broadcast rights for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments in the biggest U.S. soccer deal for an English-language network to date. Out-bidding ESPN with a figure estimated just north of $425 million, Fox Sports quadruples what its main competitor shelled out for the 2006 and 2010 rights. (Those tournaments, it should be noted, that will take place in the far less friendly time zones of Russia and Qatar.)
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"The demand and the viewership won't be four times greater, but I think Fox was competitively in a position where they felt they had to make the investment," says Rishe. "They're playing a massive game of catch-up with ESPN -- and sometimes you've got to be willing to take a loss to increase visibility and exposure."
Greater still is the opportunity for Telemundo. As Fox is to ESPN, Telemundo has long lived in Univision's shadow as the premiere Latino network in the U.S. has come to rival even the Big Four in its ratings. Telemundo shelled out 600 million to get the next two World Cups.
Spanish-speaking viewers are a healthy portion of the U.S. soccer fanbase, with more than 1 in 3 viewers watching the 2010 final on Univision. But for the rest of the audience, critical mass could come with Brazil -- where soccer's stateside profile seems as high as ever, despite the lack of a competitive team.
Even head coach Jurgen Klinsmann has ruled Team U.S. as a big draw. "For us now talking about winning a World Cup," Klinsmann recently told The New York Times, "it is just not realistic."
