2022 World Cup to generate $550 million for local pay-TV
Rebecca Hawkes ©RapidTVNews | 09-12-2010
Revenues gained from Middle East rights to televise prime football matches are expected to rise 30% to US$550million by the time Qatar hosts the FIFA World Cup in 2022, according to consultants, Grant Thornton.
Its new study, commissioned by the successful Qatar 2022 bid team, said up to 90% of this revenue would go to football’s world governing body FIFA, rather than to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state itself.
World Cup TV audiences have risen almost 350% in the Middle East since 1986, according to Grant Thornton, while TV penetration rates in Qatar itself have grown from 67% to 94% since 2002. Football is undoubtedly popular in the oil and gas-rich country – with the bid team claiming 77% of men and 64% of women regularly watch televised matches, making “football the most watched programme on TV”.
Although FIFA does not foresee a high level of interest in Qatar from its international commercial affiliates, the state’s geographical position at the western tip of Asia places it centrally between some of the most football fixated audiences of the world. In summertime, Qatar is in the same time zone as East Africa, just one hour ahead of most of Europe, two hours ahead of the UK, and four hours behind most of East Asia.
As Grant Thornton points out: “Given the central location of Qatar, 82% of the world’s time zones would receive Qatar 2022 games in prime time, with a potential match day peak audience of 3.2 billion viewers.”
While regional sponsorship deals for 2022 may not be particularly lucrative compared to more mature markets, GCC-based analysts suggest that Qatar’s World Cup will still present a viable opportunity for international advertisers to reach a sizeable TV audience in the Middle East that has previously been neglected.
Ultimately, Grant Thornton believes that by staging the World Cup Qatar will “grow the value of football in the region by $14 billion by 2022 [up 52%] and by a further $10 billion [46%] by 2042.”
