CBC Having a Ball with World Cup Ratings

Turns out that the constant droning of those stoopid vuvuzelas haven’t driven every soccer fan away from the FIFA World Cup. CBC–fresh off a great Stanley Cup spring–had a very good soccer weekend, with 2,275,000 tuning in Saturday afternoon to watch England and U.S.A. battle to a draw. That’s the largest audience ever in Canadian TV for a World Cup preliminary match, not that surprising given the fact that the PPM “ratings ‘roids” have been goosing live event sports numbers since they were introduced last September.
Germany vs. Australia drew an estimated, overnight 1,660,000 viewers to CBC Sunday afternoon. Another 1,156,000 were counted as Italy tied Paraguay Monday afternoon.
ABC’s coverage of the U.S./England tilt scored Stateside as well with fast national numbers suggesting nearly 13 million tuned in to the game. That would be the best Stateside soccer score since 1994. Preliminary games on ESPN are also up 100% over the same coverage four years ago. That droning must be hypnotic.