We have all heard the famous line from Mark Twain about how numbers and data can be twisted to make a point, no matter how false they are, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
A similar quote that this writer’s late father always used was statistics are like a bikini, they show a lot but hide the bare essentials.”
The same day as we published “The Band Played On, But is It Time for The Lifeboats?” the International Hockey Federation (FIH) sent out a press release and published on its website a piece entititled “FIH Hockey World Cup 2026 breaks New Ground With Record Audiences.”
The article claimed that the current men’s and women’s world Cups have attracted record engagement across the FIH’s digital platforms.
They went on to say “As the tournament reaches the end of its second pool phase, World Cup content has already generated 106.4 million views across FIH platforms – and, importantly, is taking hockey far beyond its existing fanbase.”
They claim that Instagram has generated 66.7million views and Facebook 32.6million. However, as most people know Facebook’s recording of views is very loose. When a user watches a video for at least 3 seconds or less if the video is shorter, including auto-played clips Facebook counts these as views. Many who work in this space also claim that watching more than once adds to the number of views, but Facebook has failed to confirm or deny this.
Facebook is also very clever in that while you can see the total number of views, it does not show a public list of every specific user who watched a standard video. So how much can these figures be relied upon? The top Marketing companies do not rely on them at all.
A view on Instagram is counted when a user ‘actively taps, opens, or pauses on the post,’ rather than just scrolling past it in the feed.
It was also claimed by the FIH that they have had 4.5 million views on TikTok and 2.65 million on YouTube.
On TikTok a view is recorded the exact moment playback starts, this is said to be typically after about one second of viewing or a maximum of three seconds for longer videos. A view is registered almost immediately when a video begins to play even if you have not intentionally clicked on it! If a user loops or replays your video, each repeat view is added to the total count.
The Youtube result comes as no surprise with the World Cup matches not being shown in many countries around the World and many fans simply not prepared to purchase the Watch Hockey App. So they only place they can go to watch the highlights of any of the matches is via YouTube.
Many people are unaware that YouTube updated its public view system effective August 24, 2026. YouTube now counts a view from the moment a video begins playing from the very first frame. There is no longer a minimum length of time for it to be registered as a view; this used to be three minutes. To find out how long viewers stayed the creator will now have to go in and check “Engaged Views” to be able to obtain that data.
YouTube also would investigate views once they reached 300 and remove any views that were associated to bots to drive the figure up. Whether they are still doing that is not clear. What is clear is they have had to fall in line with their competitors as due to the uninitiated it was obvioulsly harming their business that other platforms were not bothered about the accuracy of their viewing data. As usual those who failed to do their homework becoming their easy prey.
YouTube has also now capped repeat views to a limit of four to five per day per IP address. There was a time when they actually did not count repeat views. Some feel that this could distort viewing figures, as with a livestream where someone may have to take a phone call or head to the bathroom, so are they a new viewer when they come back?
With other platforms counting every time someone’s finger slides over a clip on their phone it would appear that YouTube felt it had to change its reporting to match them.
However, while the FIH’s article is extremely self-congratulatory it fails to share the crucial information that many who are unfamiliar with this space would be unaware of.
This is nothing new across many sporting organisations. Sometimes those sending out such information actually lack the understanding themselves, however often these figures are shared to try and impress and promote a narrative that they want.
Hockey Australia’s former CEO shared some stats last year on the Pro League viewing figures on 7Plus revealing that this was all part of the “Hockey Australia Strategic Plan and the growth of our Sport.”
Realistically the viewing figures were poor. What the figures actually revealed was that Hockey Australia has a loyal fan base but it is a small one. When they watch games they stick with them, although the average viewing time was down on the previous year. Yet the viewer numbers were marginally up, but still averaged less than 10,000 per game, which shows why the World Cup has not been picked up by any broadcaster.
The FIH claim that “on Instagram alone more than 11 million non-followers have been reached.”
The FIH has 462,000 followers on Instagram. What this statement means is that 11 million people who are NOT followers clicked on their Instagram posts.
Having consulted a digital marketing expert with over 20 years experience in this space and having shared the FIH’s article with them their first reaction to this type of claim was ‘what percentage of non-followers were generated organically?’
In other words they just came to the sites without any prompts.
The next question was ‘do the FIH have a paid strategy to support these results?’ In other words did they pay for followers? This is nothing new, and many big organisations do this to make their figures look better than they really are. Remarkably there is no law stating that they must declare this. If there was a great many “influencers” would be out of business overnight.
Our expert said that ‘these results are great, but the key now is what is the strategy beyond this to leverage these non-followers? How is the FIH going to translate these figures into fans watching the the World Cup and the sport beyond that, and also play the game?’ This is probably the most important question, as if you do not have a plan around this what is the point of boasting about such figures?
Our expert felt that this plan should be made public, and if not key stakeholders need to be asking for a copy of the plan.
Of course one of the issues that is always going to restrict turning these non-followers into fans is having the sport aired behind a paywall or on an app that only those in the sport know about!
Which raises the question that many who read the story put out by the FIH have already asked, if people had been able to watch the World Cup and it was readily available in their home countries, would these figures be so high? The unavailability of the tournament according to our expert ‘would certainly have driven up online views for content.’
Which leads into the need to know more information about the non-followers. How does the FIH know that these ‘non-followers’ are not already hockey fans, but simply do not follow their social media accounts? Is it not realistic to think that many hockey fans without the tournament being aired in their home country have been scouring the internet for content, yet do not follow the FIH’s platforms.
So as our expert pointed out the FIH was very clever with its statement that said ‘the extraordinary high proportion of views and interactions coming from non-followers shows that the World Cup is attracting people who were not previously part of the FIH digital community.’ They are not clearly stating that they were not hockey fans, just that they were not followers on their digital platforms.
They continued that quote by saying that this was “demonstrating the way the presentation of hockey is evolving.’ This is extremely questionable. As stated previously had the tournament been available to watch in more countries would these figures have been close to these levels? With the lack of coverage they show that there is a hunger out there. The evolution is probably one that is not going to sit well with many if this is how it is to be in the long term.
Whether these non-followers are in fact already hockey fans is very important information, and should be shared so that we can actually determine whether the event has grown the attention of people with no connection already to the sport. Or is it simply those already with an interest already trying to find information? Those who do not “follow” the FIH’s digital platforms.
Our expert stated that this was a very ‘inward focussed’ approach, and that what would be more beneficial would be to step back from these figures and in their words explained, ‘today you never look at the figures you look at the trends and actions.’
They clarified what they meant by this by saying that if you have a digital presence you should know what your average view or engagement is per week, even per day. It is common for these to flat line, but what you need to know is when they go up or down, also what affects them going up and down. This will help you position yourself in context to other influences.
In the context of the World Cups, which posts about which teams are generating the most traction? Are that nations games being broadcast on free to air channels back home? Which day are you finding that you get the most engagement?
Our expert also asked whether these figures were linked to tangible measuring sticks. Are they helping drive subscriptions of the Watch Hockey App? Are people only purchasing the World Cup package? If so how are you going to get them to come back?
Are you monitoring player registrations in the coming seasons to see if this interest turns into more player registrations nationally? Again, compare to the countries where the World Cup was available to view to those where it was behind a paywall, and see if there were indicators as to the impact this had.
Compare these to the traditional upturn in registrations after a Word Cup tournament. Taking football as an example, participation numbers traditionally across the globe rise in the year before a World Cup and the two years after, but decline in the third year. Does Hockey have a similar trend? How much will not having the games available across hockey playing nations impact those figures this time around?
The article is in fact more of an advertorial justifying a strategy and claiming that it has worked, but as our expert said “How many views of the World Cup itself are being achieved, and can the FIH tell if these views came as a result of their social media channels? Surely the key is to have people watching games in full and not just highlights?”
They went onto say that if these results are indeed generated organically, how is hockey going to keep these people involved and following the sport once the World Cup is over? If there is no strategy in place to achieve this then what really has been gained?
Sadly, there are many in the Hockey fraternity who question the validity of these figures. Much of that stems from the claim when the ten year Watch Hockey app deal was signed with NAGRA, and it was promoted that this would service the “30 million players, fans, and officials worldwide.”
If one looks at the amount of short clips that have been produced and the number of views they are getting it is feasible that they are achieving the cumulative figures that have been promoted. Of course it would be interesting to know how many posts have been created on each platform and the average number of views per post, and how many are being watched by the same people, as that too would give a good insight into whether the sport has really managed to grow the following.
Of course some posts that garnered a large number of views were the posts featuring cricket legends Rahul Dravid and Steve Waugh, alongside Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan. They were seen supporting India at their crucial FIH Hockey World Cup match against the Netherlands,
Needless to say Hockey saw this as chance to gain some views, – certainly the powers that be were lining up for photos – but in reality was the sport acting in the best interests of Hockey?
It transpires that the reason that they were in the Netherlands was for the launch of the European T20 Premier League (ETPL). Abhishek Bachchan is a co-founder of the ETPL, which aims to promote cricket in Europe. A sport that will no doubt compete against Hockey, certainly for sponsorship dollars.
T20 cricket is all about the crowd experience. Dutch Hockey is one of the best at creating a fantastic atmosphere at games, but could this league pull some fans away from the sport? After all so many hockey players have been very good cricketers and vice versa. Australian Jamie Dwyer who was pictured with the stars famously turned his back on cricket so that he could go to the Olympic Games. How many will share his view?
While on paper these figures look fantastic there are so many questions that need to be addressed to find out if they are actually as positive as they would appear, and the reporting of views by all platforms can be extremely deceiving, but surely the FIH is well aware of that? Hopefully key individuals will pursue this matter and gain more information and discover what the plan is moving forward to turn any non-hockey followers into long term supporters, or players. After all is that not the reason behind creating such content? To grow the game.
As Plato wrote, “a good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” It is time to extract that knowledge from these numbers.
