Early starts fail to dent World Cup fever as SBS reaches 11.6m Australians

Early mornings and work-hour kick-offs have done little to dampen Australia’s appetite for the FIFA World Cup, with more than 11.6 million Australians tuning into SBS’s coverage in the first nine days of the tournament.

SBS said its World Cup broadcast has reached 11.67 million Australians so far, driven by strong audiences for the Socceroos and a heavy shift into digital viewing.

Australia’s second group-stage match, a 2-0 loss to tournament host the US on Saturday morning, reached 3.4 million viewers across Total TV. 

The match drew a Total TV average audience of 2.1 million across linear television and digital streaming, with 46% of viewers watching through SBS On Demand.

SEE MORE: On Demand at the heart of SBS' World Cup push

The result came despite the match airing early on Saturday morning, with the pre-match program beginning at 4am AEST and still reaching 1.24 million viewers.

SBS dominated the free-to-air ratings on 20 June, taking the top three programs of the day and seven of the top 10 across live matches and pre and post-match coverage.

The opening Socceroos match against Türkiye remains the biggest match of the tournament so far for SBS, reaching 4.7 million viewers and drawing an average audience of 3 million.

Other strong performers include Haiti v Scotland, which reached 1.9 million viewers, Brazil v Morocco, which reached 1.9 million and USA v Paraguay, which reached 1.717 million. So far, 18 matches have reached more than one million viewers each, with four weeks of the tournament still to run.

The World Cup has also cut through with younger audiences. SBS said its coverage ranked number one in the VOZ daily ratings among 16- to 39-year-olds for eight of the first nine days of the tournament.

Hyundai, Hisense, Macca’s, Rexona, bet365, Commonwealth Bank and Youi are commercial partners of SBS’s broadcast.