South Africa (2010) has been the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first round. The best-attended single match, shown in the last three columns, has been the final in 11 of the 21 World Cups as of 2018. Another match or matches drew more attendance than the final in 1930, 1938, 1958, 1962, 1970–1982, 1990, and 2006. Source: FIFA The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world. The cumulative viewership of all matches of the 2006 World Cup was estimated to be 26.29 billion