Photo Credit: USA Today Sports Images
Following the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the Crew welcomes Giancarlo Gonzalez and Waylon Francis back to Columbus for tonight’s match against Sporting KC. Many fans in Columbus watched the Costa Rican duo during the tournament, as well as United States Men’s National Team players Graham Zusi and Matt Besler from Sporting KC.
Here are a few numbers and notes to know following the monthlong battle of countries on the world’s stage…
TV Ratings
- USA v. Ghana: 6.3 rating nationally (11.1 million people), 8.9 in Columbus (fifth-highest market).
- USA v. Portugal: 9.6 rating nationally (18.2 million people), 12.6 in Columbus (second-highest market)
- USA v. Germany: 6.7 rating nationally (10.8 millon people), 8.1 in Columbus (seventh-highest market)
- USA v. Belgium: 9.8 rating nationally (16.5 million people), 10.8 in Columbus (tenth-highest market)
- For comparison, here are the average ratings for several other recent national sporting events: Monday Night Football for the 2013 NFL season (9.6), the 2013 World Series (8.9), the 2014 Stanley Cup Final (2.8) and the 2014 NBA Finals (9.3).
Social Media
- 220 million Facebook users have combined for over one billion interactions on the site since it started. It's the largest event, sports or otherwise, in Facebook history.
- With two weeks remaining in the tournament, the World Cup generated 300 million tweets, doubling the entire London Olympics.
- The USA hashflag was the most tweeted of any nation's.
Digital
- Americans made up a full 20% of all the traffic to the FIFA official apps and Web sites. Over the tournament, 36.7 million unique visitors from the United States have visited FIFA.com or the FIFA app. That's about 11.28% of the U.S. population.
Ticketing
- Americans bought more World Cup game tickets than any other country, behind host country Brazil (also happened in 2010 with USA, second behind host South Africa).
