AFC Champions League TV Viewers up 53%

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) have seen television audiences for the Champions League rise by 53% in 2012, clinic up to 262.4 million.

The continent’s premier club football competition saw particular growth in the Australian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Middle Eastern markets over the past year.

With overall ratings raised by 90.5 million, Australia, China, Japan and Korea Republic contributed 224.7 million viewers, which represented a 53% (71.8 million) increase on 2011 and a 78% (98.5 million) increase on 2010.

AFC Acting President Zhang Jilong said: “Once again, as we have seen consistently throughout recent years, the popularity of the AFC Champions League continues to grow.

“The TV audience figures for the 2012 season highlight further that football fans in Asia want to watch Asian club football in increasing numbers and they are testimony to the growth within the AFC Champions League since its creation in 2002. 

“We are confident that we can continue to build on the impressive growth that was shown last year and enhance further the AFC Champions League’s position as the preeminent club competition in Asian football.”

A total of six matches exceeded 10 million viewers and Guangzhou Evergrande vs. FC Tokyo drew the largest audience at the Round of 16 stage. 19.2 million viewers tuned in to watch the match.

“Due to the good performance of Guangzhou Evergrande, the impact on Chinese national sport’s broadcaster CCTV-5 was quickly visible with both a large increase in the number of games aired in 2012 and also in the audience numbers,” said Pierre Justo, Director of Sports and Media at CSM Media Research-KantarSport, who compiled and analysed the data in China and Korea Republic.

“In the end the AFC Champions League held four of the top 10 football audiences of the year on CCTV-5, including the two best football audiences of the year. 

“There is no doubt that if Guangzhou had made it to the semi-final and final, the ratings would have been even higher. Indeed CCTV-5 saw its ratings increase regularly from the start of the group stages to the final rounds, thanks to the success of Guangzhou.”