T

he AFF Suzuki Cup, in which Indonesia finished as runner-up for the fourth time, reaffirmed its position as Southeast Asia’s top rating TV program with a total of 192 viewers during the month-long tournament in 2010.

The Cup is the top national soccer team’s competition in the region.

The audience, which represented ratings on broadcasters RCTI in Indonesia, RTM in Malaysia, ABS-CBN in the Philippines, MediaCorp in Singapore, BBTV in Thailand, VTV in Vietnam and ESPN Star Sports’ regional platform saw a 32 percent increase from the 2008 edition, the event’s organizers said in a statement sent to The Jakarta Post.

The two final leg matches between Indonesia and Malaysia in particular sent ratings soaring. According to Nielsen, an average of 15 million Indonesians watched both games on RCTI, more than twice the number recorded for the highest-rated FIFA World Cup 2010 match in the country.

The second leg final alone generated a 79 percent market share while the second leg semi-final is RCTI’s highest-rated program of all time with a market share of 82 percent. It is also the largest viewing audience ever recorded in a single market, in the history of the competition.

Broadcasts of the AFF Cup matches remain among the highest-rated programs in Indonesia.

“During the AFF Cup, we did not only experience history being crafted in the Indonesian television industry with the event becoming the highest-rated program in the country over the last ten years, but we also saw the nation’s spirit lifted,” said Rudy Ramawy, director of programming and production of RCTI.

“The event was a major national topic for a whole month beating all other issues and the hype was even bigger than any FIFA World Cup event.”

In Malaysia, national free-to-air broadcaster RTM recorded shares of 40.3 percent and 48.4 percent respectively for each of the two final leg matches. The total audience reached in the territory saw an eight-fold increase from the previous edition of the tournament.

Vietnam delivered the second largest viewership market after Indonesia with a total audience of 74.5 million.

The television audiences together with live attendances of nearly 800,000 reaffirms the AFF Suzuki Cup’s position as the number one football event and ratings leader in Southeast Asia.

The event also received a significant following on Internet and social media platforms. Nearly 2 million fans visited the event’s official website affsuzukicup.com while 193,172 fans interacted with each other through the event’s facebook page. Additionally, there were some 1.7 million views of the 35 videos featuring AFF Suzuki Cup 2010 action on YouTube.