Media Stats Released on SA World Cup Opening Match

June 16 - FIFA released statistics, showing that over 11 million South Africans tuned in to watch the World Cup opening match against Mexico.

Research done by the Nielson Company showed that in the final five minutes of the game, "audiences peaked at 11,097,981".

The statistics were made up by audiences watching on SABC 1 and Supersport 3.

These numbers were shown to be 39% higher than the highest sports audience registered in 2009, when 7.35 million South Africans tuned in to watch the semi finals of the FIFA Confederations Cup.

Unfortunately, South African was knocked out by Brazil in that match.

The France versus Uruguay match  in this year's World Cup attracted over 5.5 million viewers.

It wasn't only South Africa where World Cup viewing reached all-time highs.

Univision in the United States managed to clock in one of the top ten audience sizes in recent years, after gaining 5.4 million viewers to watch the opening game.

The media group noted that this was double the number that tuned in to watch the opening match of the last World Cup event in 2006.

19% of the population in Mexico that owns a TV watched the match on Friday.

Finally, one in five Germans tuned in to watch the England vs USA match this week.

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