One billion watched Germany triumph

A total of 1.013 billion people watched on television as Germany won its fourth World Cup title, beating Argentina 1-0 in the 2014 World Cup final, football's ruling body FIFA said Wednesday.

FIFA also said that the cumulative in-house audience of the tournament in Brazil even reached 3.2 billion, while viewer records were broken in countries including Germany and the United States.

The in-house viewer number was given at 695 million for the final in Rio, up 12 per cent from the 2010 final in South Africa. Adding fan zones, restaurants, bars and other places where the game was aired, the number reached 1 billion.

Online and mobile device broadcasts also improved from the previous World Cup four years earlier, with 280 million people wtaching the World Cup in this way.

The Television Audience Report also said that broadcast hours rose 36 per cent compared to 2010, to 98,087 broadcast hours.

apc/ (AP, DPA)