World Cup 2014 Set To Break Television Viewing Records Worldwide

The 2014 World Cup, due to kick off in Brazil in just a few weeks time, is set to break TV viewing records globally thanks to new technology and fan-friendly scheduling, according to FIFA.

FIFA’s television director, Niclas Ericson, told reporters on Monday that they are expecting massive audiences to view the World Cup matches this year:

“We have some reasons to say the audience will increase. We worked very hard on the match schedule and the times we have now, we think will be very good for the football fan,” Ericson said.

He also spoke about the fact that kick off times are optimal for viewers across at least three continents:

“We think we have very good kick off times for Africa, the Middle East and Europe and will continue to grow the audience there. And as the World Cup is in the Americas, we’ll have even better figures from there than ever before. Asia has grown very fast in term of viewers and rights fees and I believe that even on paper before the event it looks extremely good to break the records we have.”

Even though the numbers are expected to be big, Ericson refused to speculate about any specifics.

“We know that an opening match featuring Brazil is going to be record-breaking across the world because it is Brazil,” he said.

As well as the viewer-friendly times, enhanced quality will also improve the World Cup 2014 viewing experience. There will be 34 cameras per match and at least 3,000 staff from across 48 different countries working on delivering the perfect football match to viewers.

“We produce the matches with a lot of cameras, we produce several different feeds and the match footage is a rich service. But we also produce a lot of content outside of the game, which makes for a rich multi-media service offering,” Ericson said.

It remains to be seen what the actual numbers will be when the World Cup 2014 kicks off in Brazil later this month, but there is no question they will be record-breaking.