Bengaluru: The first multi-national futsal tournament in the world has set up camp in India, adding to an increasingly large audience of sports viewers.
According to TV viewership behaviour profiles data released by ZAPR, ‘The Premier Futsal League’ aired on Sony ESPN Channels has roped in 13 million TV viewers for the tournament which took place between 15th and 24th July. With big football names like Ronaldinho, Paul Scholes and Michel Salgado signed up as marquee players, the tournament reveals a segment of futsal viewers with interesting TV viewing habits.
The opening day garnered 4.8 million TV viewers tuned in for a futsal sneak-peek presented by international futsal freestylers and the league’s theme song performed by A.R Rahman. This was followed by the first two matches of the tournament.
The league has seen a consistent viewership for the entire duration of the tournament. Midway through the season, Ronaldinho’s last match on 17th July garnered one of the highest viewership for the entire tournament with 3.9 million TV viewers.
The league has successfully captured a significant portion of the audiences who follow football – the game’s more popular cousin: 26% of the futsal league viewers had also watched the recent UEFA Euro Championships this year. But if football does not command the majority of futsal viewers, then who are these viewers? What other sporting leagues do they watch?
Among the varied content consumed by futsal viewers across television, Hindi entertainment and movies are the highest watched genres, followed by Tamil and music content.
ZAPR can help you identify these viewers across their niche interests and carry out a device level engagement with them.
Note: ZAPR profiles the TV viewership behavior of tens of millions of individuals across India. The audiences considered in this study are part of ZAPR’s TV viewership audience pool.
