Historical FTA Socceroos World Cup Ratings

Jason Lassey June 16, 2026 2 minutes read

According to Mediaweek – The biggest SBS audience ever in the OzTAM era (post-2001) for a football match was 3.41m watching Australia v Uruguay in a World Cup qualification game that also had an 8pm kick-off back in 2005.

Ill try to fill in the gaps as time goes on.

2006 FIFA World Cup

Aus v Japan, 1am, 2.168m
Aus v Brazil, 2am, 1.53m
Aus v Croatia, 5am, 2.023m

2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa

Aus v Germany, 1.4m
Aus v Ghana
Aus v Serbia

SBS’s coverage extended across TV, online, radio, mobile, tablet and social media and it paid off, with SBS reaching 10.7 million Australians with our TV broadcast, over 13 million video streams viewed and the SBS World Cup app download more than 400,000 times. SBS radio offered commentary in 15 languages, the largest ever by a broadcaster in World Cup history.

2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil

Aus v Chile, 8am, 2.276m ave
Aus v Netherlands, 2am, 871,000 ave
Aus v Spain,

2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia

Aus v France, 8pm, 2.132m ave (3.4m reach)
Aus v Denmark, 2.064m (3.2m reach)
Aus v Peru, 1.029m (1.5m reach)

2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar

Aus v France, 6am, 1m ave
Aus v Tunisia, 9pm, 1.72m metro
Aus v Demark, 2am, 618,000
Aus v Argentina, 1.7m

Audiences flocked to SBS, enjoying more than 80 million hours of tournament content.

The event redefined traditional consumption models for a major sporting event, with Linear bringing in 52 million and Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD) totaling 28 million consumption hours.

More than 9 million Australians watched on Linear TV; while SBS On Demand saw a record breaking 4.5 million stream the tournament.

Australia’s win over Tunisia was the top match with an average combined audience of 1.72 million. Total linear reached topped 2.15 million.

References