It’s fair to say that the performance of the FIFA World Cup 2022, with its human rights controversies and Christmas-clash challenges, was hard for marketeers to predict.
Days after Argentina’s nail-biting victory over France, it’s clear that this was another record-breaking World Cup, despite its unique set of challenges. While stadium boycotts and global protests will also go down in the FIFA Qatar 2022 history books, the enduring popularity of the tournament is undeniable – and it owes a great deal to digital marketing.
On The Pitch
As any fan hopes to see in a World Cup, plenty of records were broken on the pitch. A total of 172 goals marked a new record for the tournament1, while Morocco became the first African country to reach the semi-finals.
The records broken by individual players also did their part to captivate audiences2. Here are some of the highlights:
Lionel Messi
- Lifted the cup for the first time, finally emulating fellow Argentine legend Diego Armando Maradona.
- Became the first Argentinian player to score in four World Cups.
- Became the all-time World Cup top-scorer for Argentina.
- Surpassed the previous record of 25 World Cup appearances by a player in the final.
Cristiano Ronaldo
- Became the first player to score at five World Cups.
- Became the oldest player to score for Portugal at the World Cup.
Kylian Mbappé
- Became the oldest player to score for Portugal at the World Cup.
Viewing and searching
TV and streaming
FIFA are yet to reveal their global viewing figures for World Cup 2022. However, we do know that around 20 million people in the UK and 26 million in the US watched the Argentina-France final on TV and streaming channels3. This beats the national viewing statistics for the 2018 France-Croatia final – surpassing the UK’s record-low of 11.4 million viewers4 and the US’s 17.8 million viewers.
There may be questions around official stadium attendance figures – particularly when it comes to fans from Western Europe – but what is becoming clear is that TV and streaming viewership of the final didn’t significantly suffer from boycotts based on the ethical issues surrounding Qatar 2022.
Battle of the Brits
British TV broadcasting channels BBC and ITV fought for audiences during this year’s final. With 14.9 million viewers to ITV’s 4.3 million, the BBC snatched a huge victory6.
Google search
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has confirmed that searches to do with the World Cup resulted in the search engine’s highest traffic in 25 years7. From interest in the working conditions and death toll of stadium builders to the top performing countries and players, the mass of World Cup queries made it feel like “the entire world was searching about one thing,” according to Pichai.
Social media
Off the pitch, social media are arguably the clear champions of this year’s tournament. The records and milestones have come flooding in:
Instagram – record likes for a post
If it’s possible for a photo to reach legendary status within a few days, Messi’s Instagram post of him lifting the World Cup has done it. This post has become the most liked post in Instagram’s history – surpassing the famous egg’s 55.7 million record with 71 million likes8 – and counting!
Twitter – record World Cup tweets
When Mbappé scored his second goal to equal the score in the final, twitter reached a record-high 24,400 tweets per second9. For the entire tournament, twitter also logged 147 billion impressions of the World Cup global conversation – a 226% increase on World Cup 201810.
WhatsApp – record messages per second
Mark Zuckerberg, owner of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, has declared that instant messaging app WhatsApp clocked 25 million messages per second during final match between Argentina and France11.
