Politicians, NGOs, athletes, actors, companies, cities… In France, the Football World Cup, which began on Saturday November 19 in Qatar, was the subject of numerous calls for a boycott before its start. In question: the unworthy working conditions inflicted on the workers who built the infrastructure of the tournament, the many deaths on the construction sites (around 6,500, according to several media surveys), the carbon bill of the competition probably very high with air conditioners in the stadiums, or the rights of LGBT + that Qatar does not respect…
According to the first hearings of the opening match of the French team in the competition, the boycott does not seem to be there. More than 12.5 million viewers followed, Tuesday evening on TF1, the big victory of the Blues against Australia (4-1), according to figures released the next day by the institute for measuring audiences Médiamétrie. But this observation must be nuanced.
Figures comparable to 2018, but a different measure
TF1 was pleased to have achieved, thanks to this match, “the best audience since June 2021 for all programs and all channels combined”. Figures that made Noël Le Graët, president of the French football federation, say during an interview on RTL, that “the French team is above everything and that the criticism of Qatar was excessive” . According to him, these hearings are “proof” that detractors and boycotters are not as numerous. “For the moment, we do not distinguish a boycott, confirms Vincent Chaudel, co-founder of the Observatory of sport business. There is a gap between the elites who called for a boycott of the competition and the base of football supporters. supporters do not deny that there is a problem in Qatar, simply the time is today for sport”.
Compared to the first match of the Blues in 2018 in Russia, also played against Australia, the number of viewers is almost similar: Médiamétrie counted 12.6 million four years ago. But the schedule and date of the two games complicate the comparison. In 2018, the first match for Didier Deschamps’ players was played on a Saturday at noon; in Qatar on a Tuesday at 8 p.m., prime time. And if we push the comparison with the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, where nearly 15 million viewers followed the first match of the French, the figures for 2022 seem less impressive. Especially since since 2020, Médiamétrie has been measuring audiences away from home – that is to say also in bars and restaurants. These spectators were so far invisible in the audiences of the previous Worlds, while outdoor viewing was more important, given the period in which the competition took place: in summer.
This new system, already in place during the last Euro, in 2021, enabled Médiamétrie to measure that 14% of spectators at France’s matches watched them outside their homes. We could thus estimate that some of the viewers shunned the first match of the Blues in Qatar.
Vincent Chaudel recalls however that “the France-Australia match on Tuesday did as much as the audiences of 2018, while only those of TF1 are taken into account, and not those of BeIn Sport (channel which broadcasts all the matches of the World Cup), nor those of streaming. The 12.5 million viewers are only for TF1”. In addition, according to him, “the French who boycott the world are people who would not have watched the first match anyway”. Some sort of “footix”, a term used by football fans to designate people who only watch this sport occasionally, when the national team goes far in a competition, and without understanding the subtleties. “We will see over the course of the competition if the boycott materializes”, adds Vincent Chaudel, who believes little in this hypothesis.
An economic boycott of advertisers?
If TF1 was full of viewers, it seems that the private channel also won the day with the advertisements broadcast before, during and after the match. But for the rest of the competition, the channel’s gains would be less certain. According to a article by our colleagues from World, the marketing price of the thirty-second advertising spot was, that evening, 245,000 euros. A price higher than the 200,000 euros for France-Denmark, scheduled for this Saturday at 5 p.m., and the 120,000 euros for France-Tunisia, which will take place on Wednesday November 30 at 4 p.m. “TF1 bought 130 million of its broadcasting rights, reminds Vincent Chaudel. In general, the point of balance is based on advertisements and audiences, except that we observe a great reluctance of advertisers who have bought little space advertising upstream. They do it more over time”.
Why this reluctance? “There has been such political and media pressure on the boycott of this World Cup that brands are afraid to associate their name with controversy,” comments the director of the sports business observatory. In addition, for this type of event, it is not uncommon for brands to set up a process called “Ambush marketing”: it involves associating a brand with the event in question, without it be a partner. “It’s an appropriation of the event to be associated with it in the eyes of the general public”, explains Vincent Chaudel. And which pushes partner brands and others to engage in real advertising battles. “Now, we don’t see this phenomenon happening. It’s very soft.”
The specialist is convinced that this economic boycott will ultimately be very “dependent blue”. In other words, if France goes far in the competition, advertisers could let go more. And if this is not the case, TF1 could be well below its breakeven point.