FIFA World Cup 2022: Some Useless Statistics

To recap, here are the 8 groups in the World Cup group stage

Group A	Group B	Group C	Group D
Qatar	England	Argentina	France
Netherlands	USA	Mexico	Denmark
Senegal	Wales	Poland	Tunisia
Ecuador	IR Iran	Saudi Arabia	Australia
Group E	Group F	Group G	Group H
Spain	Belgium	Brazil	Portugal
Germany	Croatia	Switzerland	Uruguay
Japan	Morocco	Serbia	Korea Republic
Costa Rica	Canada	Cameroon	Ghana

There are in total 48 matches in the group stage, which are impossible to watch them all. In particular, round 3 of the group stage matches happen simultaneously as these determine which team will advance to the knock out stage.

Logically, the matches with the highest population of the two teams competing will have the most viewers. And here are top 10 most popular matches based on population:

As you can see, these are dominated by the big four countries with over 100 million population (USA, Brazil, Mexico, Japan). However, the assumption here is not accurate as the levels of enthusiasm in football (or soccer) between different countries are totally different (e.g. USA and Brazil). In addition, the World Cup is not only watched by the countries competing (as you can see from the number of Chinese billboards in the stadium). Naturally the matches between the strongest teams will attract the most number of viewers. So here are the top 10 matches based on the FIFA men's rankings as of 6 October 2022:

No match from Group A is in the above list, as the seeded team Qatar is too weak (ranked 50), and the best team Netherlands is only ranked 8th in the world.

However, there is another consideration regarding the World Cup matches, time differences. For few of the most populous time zones, some matches are played in the wee hours in the morning.

So for example, the Brazil vs Switzerland match which starts at 19:00 in Qatar, or Spain vs Germany at 22:00 will be missed by many East Asian viewers, while many North Americans missed the famous upset by Saudi Arabia against Argentina which was played at 13:00 in Qatar, or Japan beating Germany which happened at 16:00. Anyway, many die-hard fans around the world will sacrifice their sleep for watching football.

On paper, if we go by ranking alone, the following should be the match up in the round of 16:

In theory, the match with the highest total points (i.e. the strongest teams) and lowest point differences (i.e. the tightest match) would be the most interesting. These mean Brazil vs Uruguay Korea Republic (who doesn't love watching Brazil?), and Portugal vs Switzerland (both mid-tier European teams) are the ones to watch. However, things will never go the way as planned, and the table above will certainly not be the reality, e.g. Germany may not be able to progress after its loss to Japan. We will find out in a week's time.

**(3/12/22) I have updated the tables now all group matches are completed.