9 World Cup Ecommerce and Marketing Stats with Bite

All eyes are on the World Cup for at least the next few weeks. The millions of people watching, streaming, chatting, searching, Facebooking, and tweeting make clear the impact this one sporting event—the largest to date—has on the people of the world. What also becomes clear is the financial impact, as sponsors vie for attention between matches.

Here are some of the most staggering marketing and ecommerce statistics from World Cup 2014.

• The World Cup is big business for everyone, but most notably FIFA, which is projected to generate $4 billion, 66% more than the previous World Cup in 2010.

• 90% of the world has contributed in some form to 14 different social networks regarding the World Cup. To put this in perspective, consider that the Olympics reached 84%, while the Super Bowl only registered 78%.
• Soccer is growing in popularity at a rapid rate. 63% of searches regarding the UEFA Champions League match for 2014 were conducted on a mobile device. Compare this to the 18% of searches about the World Cup in 2010, and we get only a tiny inkling of the percentage of searches that will be conducted this year during the World Cup in Brazil.

• Promoted and sponsored videos on YouTube for World Cup replays and highlights will be huge business. Soccer is, by far, the most-watched sport on YouTube, with 1.6 billion views between April 13, 2014 and May 13, 2014, for a total of 64.7 million hours.

• Past popular YouTube soccer videos were shared by private users or networks. In a rare twist, the top five most-watched soccer videos in the US have been published by brands. Nike’s “Winner Stays” commercial for the World Cup has nearly 83 million views. 

• The World Cup is projected to generate a 27% increase in ecommerce sales for Brazil alone, for a total of $16.6 billion US dollars.
• United Kingdom consumers are projected to spend 174.71 million pounds during the World Cup. Had the team advanced to the finals, the number might have swelled to 367.49 million. 38 million pounds of those purchases will be made on mobile devices, which could have grown to 79 million pounds with a finals appearance.

• The ecommerce and inbound marketing industry in Latin America is heating up. Latin countries have the fastest-growing internet population in the world, with 147 million unique visitors to their sites in 2013, up 12% from 2012.

• Ecommerce purchases for the World Cup spiked as early as December of 2013, during the 8 weeks surrounding the draw. FIFA also saw 3.6 billion pages of its website consumed during that time. The FIFA app was also downloaded 1.3 million times in the week following its launch in December 2013.

This is truly a World Cup to top all before, but we’re not done growing yet. Imagine how these statistics will increase even more before 2018 as the world continues to adopt new technology, trust online retailers, and turn to the internet for their information.