Understanding football fans in the lead up to the World Cup

At LiveScore, we surveyed our active UK users, generating over 6,000 responses from within the LiveScore community. Our research investigates consumer behaviours, attitudes and consumption all related to the World Cup. Some key themes which the research covers are as follows:

• Feelings towards the World Cup
• General interest surrounding the event
• Levels of following across each nation
• Viewing habits
• Other activities whilst watching live football
• Consumption during live matches
• Differences compared to previous tournament
   

Who are we?

An early pioneer in the online sports media space, LiveScore™️ was founded in 1998 and is one of the world’s leading sports updates and streaming services. With millions of global users across over 200 territories, it’s long been an essential part of the match-day experience for football fans who rely on the service to provide the simplest, fastest, and most reliable updates on matches that matter to them.

 

The research

We designed a World Cup survey to go out to our active UK users to help us further understand our audience and their attitudes and behaviours towards the live football, specifically the World Cup. The response to our survey was overwhelming, yielding over 6,000 responses and a completion rate of 71%. This robust dataset of our UK audience has generated some truly deep insights across numerous areas of consumerism.

 

The World Cup: A big deal?

A significant 98% of our surveyed audience claim that they will be following the World Cup in some capacity this Winter. For context, such levels of mass interest are not seen across any other football competition in the world, the appetite for the World Cup is vast. This year’s World Cup cannot be spoken about without mentioning the differences to previous World Cup’s gone by. The first ever Winter World Cup promises to be different to its predecessors, with timing the main talking point, and what this means for how the World Cup will be consumed. Despite this, 57% of our surveyed users are feeling enthusiastic towards the tournament this Winter. The UK weather doesn’t seem to be phasing our users for how they plan to follow the tournament! Only 23% believe that their habits will change, with 56% claiming they will consume this tournament as they would a Summer World Cup.

 

Igniting interest: the build-up & the football

When it comes to thinking of the World Cup, it is easy to cast your minds straight to the football itself, but the World Cup is a whole lot more than that, from an event perspective but also for the fans. 51% of our surveyed users believe that their interest in the tournament peaks during the lead up to the tournament, with the week before the tournament generating the highest levels of interest from a pre-tournament perspective. This period is where the tournament is becoming more tangible to fans, when the possibilities seem endless and anything can happen, letting a nation’s hopes run wild.

It would be hard to approach a World Cup without getting excited about the football, and our surveyed users feel that too - 48% of our audience feel that their interest peaks during tournament, slightly lower than that of pre-tournament. However, we put this down to the nature of being a fan, when the pressure of results and being knocked out early can dampen the interests of certain nations. Hence why excitement prior to the tournament is ever so slightly higher. Despite this, we know just how much interest the football itself drives, and our audience will certainly be following all the action with keen interest once the tournament kicks off.

The key take-out here for any publishers or brands looking to interact with fans this World Cup; the football is important, yes, but don’t underestimate the importance of the build-up. It is a key time to generate excitement and traction with fans of all nations as we approach the most watched football tournament in the world.

 

Appetite for all

It is important to factor in the research audience here, remembering that research was UK only, which impacts the results which we see. Despite this, we see following levels well spread across all the nations at this year’s World Cup. Every single nation that has qualified for this year’s tournament, has at least 2.5% of our surveyed UK audience claiming that they will follow them. This underlines that the demand and interest in this World Cup is far reaching right across the board. Despite this, there are nations that have a greater level of following than others.

The top 10 followed nations within our surveyed UK audience are as follows:

1. England (77%)
2. Brazil (36%)
3. Wales (30%)
4. Spain (24%)
5. Germany (23%)
6. France (23%)
7. Argentina (22%)
8. Netherlands (21%)
9. Belgium (19%)
10. Portugal (19%)

The key themes that are identifiable across the teams that are more followed can be split into the following: location, previous success and deemed likelihood of winning the tournament. In terms of location bias, we see a strong following for England and Wales, as expected with the research audience being solely UK based. We see those that have had previous success in the tournament with a very strong level of following, particularly for five-time winners Brazil, who have a stronger level of following than Wales amongst our surveyed UK audience. Four-time winners Germany also see a strong level of following, coming in at the fifth most popular nation with our users. Another common theme running through these nations, is the proximity to the official FIFA rankings. Most of these nations feature in the top 10 (Germany and Wales the only exceptions), consequently lending themselves to the deemed likelihood of winning the tournament.

 

Viewing habits

One thing that is certain this World Cup, is that our surveyed users plan to watch the tournament live. 99% plan to physically watch a live match via a device at some point throughout the tournament. As a scores provider and sports media publisher, LiveScore will act as a supplement to watching live football, with 45% of our surveyed users planning to use LiveScore whilst watching live games themselves. In terms of devices of choice, 98% of our audience plan to watch the World Cup live on TV, 37% plan to watch live on mobile, 15% plan to watch live on tablet and 13% plan to watch live on PC, at some point during the tournament.

However, what device our users watch on is only half of the equation - where they watch is just as important, with the World Cup often a time of coming together for fans. After all, these tournaments only roll around once every four years, offering the chance of creating unforgettable moments with friends and family which will be spoken about for years to come.

The most popular setting is at home, with 95% of our surveyed audience claiming that they plan to watch some of the World Cup at home, up from 93% for the previous tournament. In a pub or bar is the second most popular setting, with 64% of our users claiming this, interestingly the same percentage as the previous World Cup, despite the notion that fans may be less inclined to venture out to watch the World Cup this Winter.

40% of our surveyed audience will come together at their friends/family’s house, significantly up from 36% from the previous tournament, underlining the increased coming together that we expect to see this time around. Perhaps our UK users feel there will be more to celebrate this time around? Small amounts of our surveyed users will watch in Fan Zones or Fan Parks, with 7% planning to do this, up from 6% in 2018. Only 2% of our audience are planning to attend the World Cup itself, slightly lower than we would normally see, as 16% of our users claim to have previously attended a World Cup.

 

Other activities

In the digital world in which we live, it is unrealistic to expect a fans attention to be solely focused on one single screen for 90 minutes, which is reflected in our findings. Nearly half of our users at 45% will use LiveScore whilst watching live matches themselves. This underlines our position as the supplement to live TV, providing extra layers of insight on-demand that sometimes a live broadcast cannot achieve. Placing bets is also a popular activity amongst our surveyed audience, with 45% claiming they plan to partake in betting activity whilst watching the World Cup.

Sports media consumption either side of kick-off is also extremely popular amongst our surveyed users with 41% claiming they plan to watch highlights after the matches, 35% engaging with the pre-match content and 34% planning to delve into post-match content. This reflects the far-reaching nature of the tournament as earlier touched upon. The opportunities to engage with fans exist outside of the live football, stretching way beyond ninety minutes, as our surveyed users look to be constantly informed on the latest news and action surrounding the tournament.

A huge part of tournament football is the conversation itself, which exists more online than ever before. 25% of our surveyed users believe they will use social media during the live matches, a channel which has become increasingly popular for sports publishers to engage with the footballing community. Whilst a further 22% of our surveyed users believe they will chat with friends online during live matches. As we know some of the biggest moments at global football tournaments go viral, sparking mass debate between friends and family who aren’t physically together, but look to stay connected and in the know through online messaging.

 

In-Play appetites

The nature of live football, particularly at a World Cup with matches all around the clock, mean that the matches themselves often intertwine with consumption moments for fans. Twinned with the fact that the World Cup is an event where lots of people come together to socialise, it is no surprise that consumption moments feature at the heart of this. 74% of our surveyed audience claim that they are likely to drink alcohol during the live matches themselves, not a huge surprise given that 64% of our audience plan to watch matches in a pub or bar. However, these moments stretch beyond the setting of just a pub or bar, with at home and in the company of others at a friend’s or family’s house likely to be key features of alcohol consumption too. Despite this, it’s not all about alcohol, as 44% of our surveyed users plan to consume soft drinks during the World Cup, significantly up from 39% for Russia 2018. The growth in consumption in non-alcoholic drinks is likely to have had an impact on this, twinned with larger percentages of the population looking to cut down on alcohol consumption too.

Food is also an important part of consumption moments during live football for fans, and our community is no different. 69% of our surveyed audience plan to partake in snacking whilst watching this year’s World Cup, which can again span across all settings, at home, in public and at matches themselves. If snacks weren’t enough to satiate our users, 54% of our surveyed audience plan to go one step further than snacking and order a takeaway to enjoy whilst watching the live matches. With the planned kick-off times that feature in phase 1 of the group stages (10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm), the opportunities to order a take-away are heightened, arguably spanning all three mealtimes across the day. This again increases the window of opportunity for engagement with our audience.

 

What’s different this time around?

The main difference as we all know between this World Cup and all other World Cups that have gone by is timing. The first ever Winter World Cup has made some fans re-consider their following routines for the World Cup, or at least think twice about how they will be affected by the change in timing. However, as we earlier revealed, 56% of our surveyed users plan to follow the World Cup in the same manner as they have previously, with only 23% of our audience believing their habits will change.

We earlier touched upon increased together time during this tournament, significantly more of our users believe they plan to come together at friend’s or family’s houses to watch the live matches. 40% this time around, compared to 36% to four years ago, represents a considerable shift amongst the surveyed user base, which could result in increased consumption moments. Despite this shift towards in-home together time, the same percentage of users still plan to watch some of the tournament in a pub or bar as the previous tournament four years ago at 64%.

Compared to the last World Cup, we also expect a significantly higher proportion of our audience to use LiveScore as a method of following the tournament. 15% more of our surveyed UK audience believe that LiveScore will act as a method of following the tournament compared to four years ago. Ultimately, this underpins the fact that consumers are much more reachable in this digital age. When a live match is underway, reaching consumers through live broadcast is no longer the only option, with second screening becoming a staple in how our users consume football.

Staying on the theme of an increasingly digitalised world, growth in mobile streaming has been significant over the last few years, particularly in a sporting context. 37% of our surveyed audience believe that they will stream some of this year’s World Cup live on mobile, compared to just 26% for the previous tournament. This represents a seismic shift and adds weight to the argument that watching live doesn’t always mean reaching the consumer sat at home in front of the TV.

Another considerable difference at this year’s World Cup amongst our surveyed users is planned attendance. Just 2% of our surveyed users believe that they will be attending the World Cup this year. For context, 16% of our surveyed audience claim to have attended a previous World Cup. Therefore, we would have expected this level of 2% to be slightly higher. This could be down to a numerous number of factors, such as timing (Winter vs Summer), proximity of the competition to the UK or even the cost-of-living crisis.