The Impact of Hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup on Differences in TV Viewership Between Seasoned Football Fans and Occasional Watchers of Football Games in Russia

Abstract

This article explores Russian TV viewership for football games at seven international football tournaments from 2006 to 2018. The research goal is 2-fold. First, we identify the determinants of Russian viewership for football mega-events. We focus on patriotism effects, and we check for any hosting impact of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. Second, we analyze how these determinants differ in explaining two distinct TV metrics: Audience Size and Reach. Results indicate that the metrics are partially driven by different determinants which can be linked to two types of viewers: seasoned football fans and occasional watchers of football games.

Substitution Effects and the Transnational Demand for European Soccer Telecasts

“…Hereto, empirical evidence is inclusive. For instance, Buraimo and Simmons (2009) found increased viewership for Premier League games televised on weekend slots, while Van Reeth and Osokin (2020) reported lower viewership of FIFA World Cup games televised on weekends. Since the European soccer games are televised in the US relatively early in the day, we expect weekend games to attract higher audiences given that the opportunity costs in our setting will be even higher during the week.…”

Factors driving FIFA world cup 2022 viewership ratings in mainland China: marketing outlooks for FIFA world cup 2026

“…Generalization and specificity were taken into account when considering potential driving factors. van Reeth and Osokin ( 14 ) proposed that as the major soccer tournaments progress, such as the FIFA World Cup and European Championship, so does TV viewership. Accordingly, matches are coded as either group or knock-out to reflect this dynamic.…”

Formula 1 Grands Prix demand across different distribution channels

“…Testing Rottenberg's (1956) much-debated uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH), Forrest et al (2005) were among the first authors to model such tv audience demand in English Premier League (EPL) football, arguing that analyzing such data was potentially superior to exploiting publicly available attendance data, among others. Since then, many other authors have explored not only the English (e.g., Alavy et al, 2010;Buraimo, 2008;Cox, 2015) but also competing European football markets (e.g., Denmark: Johnson & Solvoll, 2007; Germany: Schreyer et al, 2018a;Italy: Caruso et al, 2019; Norway: Solberg & Hammervold, 2004;Spain: Buraimo & Simmons, 2009), increasingly attempting to model the tv demand for mega sports events such as the Union des associations européennes de football (UEFA) European Championship (e.g., Nüesch & Franck, 2009) and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World cup (e.g., Schreyer et al, 2017;Uribe et al, 2021;van Reeth & Osokin, 2020) as well. It is, therefore, perhaps, not surprising that today, there already exist somewhat more than 50 empirical studies, a fair share of which have modeled the tv demand for US sports (e.g., American football: Paul & Weinbach, 2007;Major League Baseball: Mills et al, 2016;National Basketball Association: Mongeon & Winfree, 2012), and, to a lesser degree, individual sports, including boxing (Meier et al, 2018), cycling (e.g., van Reeth, 2019), mixed martial arts (e.g., Tainsky et al, 2013), tennis (e.g., Konjer et al, 2017), and stock car racing (Berkowitz et al, 2011).…”