MUMBAI: The 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia continues its strong run for football viewership in India in its fourth week and guided Sony Pictures Network (SPN) India’s sports cluster to obtain all top five positions in the BARC all India ratings.

The tournament that is being telecast live on Sony Ten 2, Sony Ten 3 and Sony ESPN channels and live streamed on SonyLIV app and website.

According to BARC, Sony Ten 3 is at the top spot with 149384 impressions (000s) sum, followed by Sony Ten2 with 146283 impressions (000s) sum. Sony Six, Sony Ten1 and Sony ESPN were the other channels in the list in week 27 data.

According to the broadcaster, the network’s sports channel and Sony LIV’s total cumulative reach of the tournament is 192.7 million viewers for 58 matches which includes the viewership of live matches, wraparound shows, highlights, repeats, surround programming of FIFA World Cup for a TG of All India CS2+.

If the broadcaster’s live streaming numbers are to be believed, Sony crossed 96 million viewers across India on the sports cluster TV channels. The channel has got most of its live traction from West Bengal with 20.4 million reach followed by Kerala with 16.9 million reach. Rural market has also shown some interest in FIFA and clocked 63.1 million viewers

According to BARC, top three matches till now were Nigeria versus Argentina, Japan versus Senegal and Korea versus Mexico with 5.1 million, 4.6 million and 4.3 million impressions across India for a TG above 2+.

SPN India also informed that 47 per cent of the overall viewership is contributed by local language feeds like Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu.