The World Cup now reaches fans through television, streaming, and mobile devices, but that global access was built step by step. For the first decades of the tournament, most viewers had to rely on radio and newspapers to follow the action.
The turning point came in 1954, when the World Cup in Switzerland became the first to be broadcast live on television. That moment marked the start of a new era in football coverage, even though the reach was still limited by the technology of the time.
Before television became part of the game
The first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, followed by Italy in 1934 and France in 1938, took place before television had become a major sports medium. Broadcast technology was still developing and had not yet been widely used for football matches.
As a result, video documentation remained scarce compared with modern standards. Fans who were not inside the stadium had little more than radio commentary and printed reports to picture the atmosphere of the match.
1954 marked a decisive shift
The 1954 tournament opened a new chapter in sports broadcasting. Several matches were shown live to select European countries that already had television networks, although the coverage remained limited.
Those countries included Switzerland, France, West Germany, Italy, England, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Even so, television ownership was still low, so the audience was far smaller than it would become in later decades.
Technology was still in its early form
Broadcasts in the 1950s were far simpler than the coverage viewers know today. Camera setups were limited, and every transmission appeared in black and white.
Image quality also fell well below modern standards, yet the ability to watch a football match from another country in real time was still a major technological achievement for the period.
1966 widened the international reach
The next major milestone came at the 1966 World Cup in England. That tournament became a truly global broadcast after AT&T’s Telstar satellite made real-time cross-continental television transmission possible.
From that point on, television became the main medium connecting football fans across different regions with the World Cup. The tournament’s reach continued to expand as broadcasting technology advanced.
From black and white to modern viewing
The growth did not stop after the 1950s. The 1970 World Cup was widely associated with the color-broadcast era, and it was also the first edition shown in Indonesia through TVRI.
In Indonesia, recordings of the 1970 World Cup were first available on the state television station at the time. Two years later, TVRI also aired the live final of the 1974 World Cup in Germany with support from S.C. Johnson & Son and PT Unilever Indonesia.
Later developments carried the World Cup into HD, 4K, HDR, and internet streaming. What once reached only a handful of viewers in black and white has become a global event watched by billions at the same time.