Almost one in every five South Africans - a record 11 million South Africans - watched the opening game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup between South Africa and Mexico on Friday, according to AGB Nielsen that tracks South African TV viewership.
According to AGB Nielsen the average number of people who watched Friday's opening game was 10 146 793, with an almost equal number of women and men. The viewership for the match increased by almost a million after Bafana Bafana scored their first goal. In the last five minutes of the game, the TV audience peaked at 11 097 981 viewers for the combined TV audience of the SABC1 and SuperSport 3 channels. This is also just for measured in-home viewing and excludes the thousands watching at fan parks across the country, hotels and group viewing in other places which means the 11 million is actually an undercount.
Let me put this into context for you. South Africa's most popular show with the most viewers are SABC1's Generations with an average TV audience of 5,4 million in prime time, and a big gap between Generations and the viewership of the rest of the top nine TV shows in South Africa. The opening match viewership has now doubled Generations' viewership number.
