Ideally speaking, global viewership of FIFA world cup matches should go up as the tournament closes in on its Finale. However, if we were to look at the number of tweets posted during the past 7 days - 9th and 10th December for Quarter Finals and 13th and 14th December for Semi Finals, it is clear that lower number of viewers were tweeting during the Semi Final days than on Quarter Final days.
The counter argument could be that two matches happened on each of the Quarter Final days and only one match happened on Semi Final days. However, we witness two peaks of number of hourly tweets on Quarter Final days and they both are higher than Semi Final peaks.
We can clearly conclude that as soon as the country teams get knocked out of the tournament, the citizens lose interest in viewing FIFA matches. And in FIFA 2022 some bigger country teams did get knocked out in the Quarter Finals - England (56 Mil), Brazil (214 Mil). And the countries which advanced include smaller countries like Croatia (3.7 Mil) and Morocco (37 Mil) - Population in brackets. If Brazil and England would have qualified for the Semi Final, the viewership would have been much higher for Semi Final matches.
To many people this may just sound like a trend, for others this might mean big losses in terms of marketing conversions and revenues. For all the key sponsors of FIFA and for any international tournament, it is always better if the viewership keeps increasing to get the maximum bang for their marketing spends.
The host country also potentially loses revenues due to fewer hotel rooms taken and fewer tickets sold etc.
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