Zidane, Cannavaro & co work their magic on small screen

MUMBAI: The grand spectacle that was the FIFA World Cup ’06 is finally over. One colourful chapter has come to an end with Zinedine Zidane hanging up his boots, but the World Cup has thrown up some interesting numbers on TV viewership in India.

Nearly 3m viewers tuned in to ESPN to watch the final between France and Italy on Sunday night, which stretched beyond 120 minutes into a penalty shoot-out. Even more surprising perhaps is that an identical number of people tuned into the playoff between hosts Germany and Portugal on July 8.

According to Initiative Media’s ViewerTrack analysis, of the 3m viewers for the final, nearly 1.9m were men and 1.1m were women; this was also the first time in the knockout stage that men constituted a clear majority. Even the playoff for the third place had a larger proportion of women at nearly 1.3m.

The final predictably received top billing, emerging as the most watched match of the knockout stages, although it was a tad behind compared to the opening match between Germany and Costa Rica. The first half garnered a TRP of 2.8, which would make it higher than any sport barring cricket.

The final and the Germany-Portugal playoff had more viewership than the semi-finals. Both the semi-finals, which began an hour later compared to the final, attracted nearly 2.4m viewers. ViewerTrack analysis suggests that Brazil’s matches attracted the highest average TRP of 1.5, followed by Germany and England at 1.1 and Argentina at 1.0. Interestingly, at 1.5, the average TRP of the quarterfinals was higher than the TRP of the semi-finals, which stood at 1.0.

Throughout the month-long football extravaganza, the 35 and over age group has been the most active group following the matches. The final had 9,28,700 viewers of this age group tuning in. More than half of all the women viewers of the finals came from this age group as well, with just a shade under 6m watching the final.

The World Cup has ensured that ESPN’s viewership and its ratings have shot through the roof. During the course of the World Cup, it overtook Sony and nearly overtook Zee TV as the most watched channel besides Star Plus. Among the male audience, ESPN garnered a channel share of nearly 5.5% during the month-long tournament, second only to Star Plus.

It represented an increase of nearly 600% from it’s previous share of 0.8% in this age group. In fact ESPN saw a 500% increase in channel share across all age groups. Star Plus lost nearly 20% of overall market share during the World Cup, in the prime time slot between 9.30 PM to 11.15 PM.

ViewerTrack is compiled by Initiative Media-Lintas Media Group exclusively for ET in India.