Worldwide, TV Viewership records being set in World Cup's first days

The fifth FIFA Women's World Cup is off to a great start not only in terms of action on the pitch and atmosphere in the stadia but looks set to confirm the high expectations of TV audiences around the world.

Judging from initial figures from the first three days of play, the women's showpiece has no doubt become a standard-bearer in international football.

Just to give a first glimpse on the promising coverage the opening match between defending champions Germany against Argentina, which brought a tournament record 11-0 win, reached a market share in Germany of over 20%. In total that 2.5 million spectators tuned in on ZDF, an excellent figure matching the audience of a major Champions League match.

In Japan, the thrilling drama of Japan's team first match against England (1-1) attained almost 20% market share on Fuji TV.

The most prominent figure so far came from TV4 Sweden with a market share of 56.8% for Sweden's opening match in Group B against Nigeria (1-1).

Overall the 32 matches of the FIFA Women's World Cup are available in 200 territories on all six continents which represents not only an increase of 25% in terms of transmission to territories compared to 2003, but also significant growth in the number of broadcasters in the various regions with sometimes up to three TV stations in the same country covering the competition live.

Host broadcaster CCTV plays a major role in the success of the 2007 competition within the Chinese territory with live coverage of all FIFA Women's World Cup matches (with exception of matches played at the same time when one of the two matches will be broadcasted delayed) along with various in-depth and behind the scene programmes each day until 30 September, a first for women's football coverage in China.

The official event website,  http://www.fifa.com/womenworldcup/index.html, completes the most comprehensive event coverage in the history of the FIFA Women's World Cup with additional, free live webcasts of all matches in selected territories. Free two-minute highlight videos are made available across the world shortly after the final whistle of each match to ensure that fans all over the world do not miss out on the action. 

 (event's first viewership statistics published by Media Information at FIFA Headquarters, published prior to first weekend's matches; refers only to matches of Sept 10-12)