The AFC Asian Cup 2024 ended on February 10 at the Lusail Stadium in Lusail, Qatar, after almost a month of intense action. This football competition, contested by the senior men's national teams of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) members to determine the continental champion, became one of the most popular Sports events ever.
Readers must note that this event — the second oldest continental football championship in the world after the Copa America — differs a bit from other top international football championships. That is because the active casting of matches happened exclusively on YouTube, which has the biggest market in Asia among the larger streaming services.
Moreover, it's not very common for large-scale sports events not pertaining to North America to be streamed across Western live-streaming platforms. However, with the popularity that football, or soccer, enjoys among Sports lovers globally, the AFC was one of the notable exceptions. In fact, it found quite a substantial English-speaking audience that latched on to all the action on the pitch across these 30-odd days.
A total of 24 sides began battling for continental supremacy on January 12, and it all came down to the final between the home side and record-makers Jordan. However, Qatar ran out 3:1 winners thanks to a hat-trick from Akram Afif, who also finished as the top scorer in this tournament with eight goals from seven matches.
The AFC Asian Cup 2024 notched impressive numbers of 33.8M Hours Watched, 2.2K Peak Viewers, and 304.4K Average Viewers over 111 hours of airtime. The most popular match was the third Quarterfinals between Japan and Iran, with the latter dumping its fellow favorite out via a 2:1 win that helped it do 1.05M PV.
One of the continent's most successful and best teams ended as the most popular at this quadrennial sporting spectacle. Having won three of the first four editions this century, fans were hopeful of a successful time in Qatar, but with its failure in the knockouts, its title drought has now stretched to thirteen years.
Intriguingly, Vietnamese was the most dominant language at the AFC Asian Cup 2024, taking up around two-thirds of the total watch time. Surprisingly, Its 1.95M PV was comparable to a lot of esports events where the language reached its highest popularity.
These figures were reached despite the Vietnam side losing all of its Group Stage matches, conceding double the number of goals it scored. Despite viewership being highest in this round, fans from the country continued to show interest in the knockout rounds, with the Iran-Japan match proving especially attractive to them.
For a comparison of how high its peak concurrent viewership was, Vietnamese's most successful esports tournaments came at the last two League of Legends Worlds and the 2020 edition, racking up between 668K PV and 805K PV. Of course, this MOBA from Riot Games is highly popular in the East Asian country, with its regional league, the Vietnam Championship Series, earning a reputation as one of the more popular seasons of late that continues to show its strength in viewership (high concurrent viewers and watch time).
Sticking with Vietnamese, considering its success, there is no surprise that most YouTube channels to live stream the AFC Asian Cup 2024 matches were also from this language. All three handles that made the list were official streaming partners for various club competitions in the country, including the UEFA Champions League and the home league, V.League 1.
Moreover, two of these accounts, BÓNG ĐÁ VIỆT NAM and FPT Bóng Đá Việt, made the top five in the list of ten most popular YouTube Non-Gaming broadcasts for the duration of the event. The official channel also finished a respectable 18th, once again showing how much the craze for football can affect the dynamics of live streaming, even if it's a regional tournament between what most would say are not the most well-known or supported national slides globally.
Most successful broadcasts of sporting events of all time
When comparing it to other Sports competitions in our database, this pan-Asian meet ended as the second-most watched, behind only the Kings League 2023 Split 1. It was also the fourth-most popular one behind the Sidemen charity matches from the last two years and the topper, the La Velada del Año III.
Of course, Ibai's event, broadcast on his Twitch channel, became the most popular ever on the purple platform. Meanwhile, the Spaniard's debut edition of the hybrid football tournament, co-owned by football legend Gerard Pique, was a massive success thanks to its format, tweaked rules, and a set of playing conditions that aim to appeal to online viewers.
Getting back to the AFC Asian Cup 2024, it was a great watch for neutrals, with Jordan's fairytale run to the final being the biggest talking point. Many will argue it was the better side in the summit clash as well, but reaching that stage itself was a massive success for the tiny West Asian nation. How it builds on this foundation for future success remains to be seen, but for now, it is not a stretch to suggest that this competition, alongside its terribly fun African counterpart, is the most fun among all the continental football tournaments we see today.
