Singapore – Official sports streaming applications and those with close associations to the tournament or FIFA itself observed a huge increase in user acquisition activity as the FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament came to a culmination, according to the latest report from data.ai.
All around the world, streaming partners given official broadcast rights to stream the World Cup Final saw a surge in user acquisition activity around key matches for their respective countries’ teams.
In particular, BBC iPlayer, RTVE Play, FOX Sports in the US, and Optus Sport in Australia became focal points for fans taking in the match and those leading up to it.
FOX Sports saw dramatic spikes during the tournament around the US team’s matches. But building excitement can best be seen in the sudden increase in adoption of the BBC iPlayer app as England faced a make-or-break game against Australia, the outcome of which would determine if the UK team was in or out of the final.
Fans’ increasing need to watch the game and its results drove a 50% increase in downloads of the four apps as a cohort when compared to the same number of days preceding the tournament. In terms of numbers, these apps saw a combined 1.06 million new installs across the iOS App Store and Google Play globally during the first four weeks of the Women’s World Cup, which was up from approximately 706,000 in the four weeks leading up to it.
Also looking at how the apps performed in their home markets, there is impressive period-over-period growth in average daily downloads for Spain’s RTVE Play and US-based FOX Sports at 44% and 51%, respectively. Meanwhile, BBC iPlayer had yet to benefit from the full impact of England’s securing a final berth. Australia’s Optus Sport proved to be an outlier, with growth of more than 1,700% from its daily average coming into the tournament.
Furthermore, other apps with connections to FIFA and the Women’s World Cup tournament, like subscription or ad-supported live TV services, also posted impressive results.
According to estimates by data.ai, the average weekly time spent by US mobile users in cohort apps like Hulu and Youtube TV that carry FOX Sports Live observed an appreciable increase from 48.9 million hours to 52.8 million. The analysis of app usage data also found a combined 8% increase in weekly time spent on them during the Women’s World Cup.
Additionally, Booking.com, the official travel partner of the 2023 Women’s World Cup, delivered its best month ever for new downloads in July. The app reached 7.4 million, a significant improvement compared to how it performed in July 2022, its previous best month with 7.35 million.
Meanwhile, FIFA Soccer from EA Sports scored perhaps the greatest goal as it reached $1b in lifetime consumer spending.
