World Cup Fever: Indonesia

I have to admit that when it comes to soccer then I am a real sucker. I love the game. Fortunately I have been able to watch most games and those I wasn't able to watch, I taped.

In Indonesia it is big business and especially for the TV stations broadcasting the games and those bars and restaurants with big screens being filled up with excited supporters of the World Cup and their favourite team.

When it comes to soccer in Indonesia it is predominately the domain of males.

Damar Harsanto wrote an article on how the World cup is scoring big with male viewers and how TV rankings show that soccer viewing is taking precedent over those tear-jerking soapies.

While I am on the subject of the World Cup, check out the great work Nick is doing in Germany on the WorldCup Blog.

World Cup shows score big with young male viewers

When referee Horacio Elizondo blew the whistle to mark the World Cup opening on June 9 hundreds of thousands of fans here were perched on the edge of their seats as part of the worldwide TV audience.

They had already been on hand for the weeklong preview of the soccer extravaganza and they have remained faithful to the goings-on in Germany, a nine city survey by a TV audience measurement service company found.

"There is an increase by 6 percent overall in the viewer numbers, equal to 300,000 additional viewers" AGB Nielsen Media Research Indonesia's senior manager and head of marketing services Helen Katherina said Friday.

A total of 1,600 households in Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Denpasar, Medan, Palembang and Makassar were surveyed from May 7 to June 17. The combined viewership of the cities is 39 million.

Viewer numbers reached their peak from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. - prime time when exclusive World Cup broadcaster SCTV aired live the first round matches - on weekdays and weekends.

There was no surprise in the finding that most viewers of live matches were working men aged between 25 and 44 years old. Those aged between 15 and 24 preferred to watch reruns the following day.

The Argentina versus Serbia-Montenegro match on June 16 in Gelsenkirchen topped the list of the most watched matches followed by the Netherlands against Serbia-Montenegro on June 11 and Portugal against Iran on June 17.

During the period only two of the 10 top-rated programs were non-World Cup fare; soaps Putri yang Terbuang (Abandoned Daughter) aired by RCTI and SCTV's Mimpi Manis (Sweet Dream).
The shows scored with women viewers who mostly gave a miss to the soccer shows.

"The female viewers show a relatively flat trend with even fewer women viewing at certain times of the day" Helen said, noting her company had yet to delve deeper into the female viewers' opinions about the event.

A survey last week by AC Nielsen in several cities found women were more interested in the personalities of the game, especially England's David Beckham, over the most skilled players. Several women admitted that they became fans of soccer because of the good looks and celebrity quotient of Beckham and others.