— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on June 13, 2018, Wednesday.
2018 Russia World Cup is coming soon; however, US national team missed the world cup this time, making US fans feel disappointed. It’s the first time that US missed the world cup from 1986. The rating forecast from different sources indicates that the only the game with US team can arouse strong interest of US audience.
In 2014 Brazil world cup, the 4 final games of US team attracted 15.8 million audiences on average on the Sports channel ESPN. This figure is 3 times more than that of other states’ games.
Among them, for the games that were televised by English channels, this figure is much wider. For example, we can see the purple points in this chart, which represent the rating of the games with US team, and the yellow points represent other countries’ games. On average, there are 11.3 million audiences watch the games with US team; this figure is 4 times more than that of other games.
In the world cup this year, Fox cost a huge amount of US$425 million, defeating ESPN that under Disney and NBC and winning the World cup broadcast rights of 2018 and 2022. However, the absence of US team may cause tens of millions dollars loss to Fox. Thanks to Mexico team was shortlisted, Telemundo, which is a Spanish channel under NBC, has a better situation than the Fox.
[Cesar Conde,Telemundo chairman] "For Hispanics and enthusiasts here in the United States, soccer is like a religion, and the world cup is their cathedral, so there’s tremendous amount of excitement building."
We know that US is the 2nd largest Spanish country in the world, its population that speak Spanish just follow Mexico, reaching 410 million, in addition, there are more than 116 million people whose 2nd language is Spanish. So, according to the historical game data, the performance of Mexico team also boost US audiences’ interest in the games.
For example, according to the data from Univision, a US’ Spanish channel, in 2014 World Cup, Spanish audiences are more concerned about the Mexican team than the US team. So setting a Spanish channel or not becomes one of the main factors of different TV channels gain back loss in the world cup period.
And this world cup has collected the best teams and football players in the world, making some US soccer fans are excited. This year, Telemundo is also the first time to broadcast the world cup, and this will be the most extensive broadcast channel ever.
[Cesar Conde,Telemundo chairman] "We have prepared and we are gonna have the most multi-platform coverage that we had in our history of the World Cup in the United States, and so fans are going to be able to see it at any point across any platform at any device. We will certainly be streaming on our Telemundo app, as well as on the NBC sports app, we are excited that fans will be able to consume in anyway possible, and any way they desire."
Additionally, Franco Carraro, the ex-chairman of Italy Olympic Commission said that if Italy misses the Russia World Cup, it will bring direct loss and indirect loss to Italy, with 1 billion euros. That means, Italy would not take part in any formal competitions before the 2020 European Cup qualifier, and this means they will loss part of attractiveness and money-making ability, including sponsorship and TV broadcasts.