Austria was back at the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, and the team did well, getting through to the round of 32 before being knocked out of the competition by Spain, who beat them 3-0 on 2 July.
Bringing all the action of the FIFA World Cup 2026 to football fans at home in Austria is ORF, which is sharing its free-to-air rights for the tournament with ServusTV.
As the quarter-finals began, ORF’s content continued to be in high demand among viewers. In total, ORF’s live streams and video on demand content for the World Cup on 9 July (from midnight to midnight) provided on ORF ON and other sites and apps achieved a combined total of 20 million minutes of usage, with 1.2 million gross views (video starts), and 400,000 net views (consecutive usage sessions) in Austria.
The stream of the first half of France versus Morocco at 10pm CEST that day reached an average audience of 171,000, placing it among the top-performing World Cup matches so far.
On linear TV, the same game drew 1.066 million viewers starting from kickoff, with an average of 1.023 million viewers during the first half, achieving a 50% market share.
Setting the scene
On ORF 1, ORF has broadcast the opening match, the first and third group matches of the Austrian national team, and is set to broadcast the final as well. Michael Koegler, lead director for the tournament at ORF, is directing at the broadcaster’s Vienna-based headquarters, the ORF Centre, where the entire production is being carried out remotely.
Says Koegler: “We have been doing all the stuff regarding studio presence remotely. We have everything in our main studio here in the ORF centre. We changed the setup here for the World Cup. We moved some LED walls which we had on the floor to higher up, and enlarged the platform for presenters. And now, for the first time, we have a big table like in American sport shows where the host with the experts sit behind. So this is a big change in the whole setup and regarding the output.”
He adds: “I think it looks great. It looks really good. We have some really good AR solutions integrated which gives us a lot of possibilities regarding performance and graphics. So it’s a good change, a good adaption of the studio and the whole environment.”
ORF has developed new AR graphics for the World Cup. Says Koegler of the inhouse team that developed them: “They did a really great job. We found on the graphics this time, you can use tools for setup, which the team put in place. I think there are 26 forms [of the AR graphics using] monuments like Native American totems, and aspects of the different places where they’ve played and stuff like this. They’re really nicely done and we really found a good way to integrate it in the studio so there are a lot of options.”
Bringing the emotions
Editorially, as a director and as the overall lead director for the World Cup at ORF, Koegler comments on his strategy for bringing all those stories of the tournament to life using the studio-based programme.
“I think the key factor is to bring the emotions to the audience, and the talent will be full of emotions. In the morning show, I think it’s also more of an entertaining aspect to bring people into the day and put them in a good mood. So this is a little bit of difference in presentation, for the host to bring [entertainment] to the audience, compared to in the normal nerdy soccer world, although there is no nerdy soccer world in this situation because you have so many viewers which you normally don’t have.”
He adds on the broader audience for the World Cup versus the Austrian Football Bundesliga: “You have to also bring aspects which you think are clear to everybody, and explain it to them. You also have to have a little bit more of a side view to other aspects [of the game] because not everyone is very interested in the [manager’s tactics for a game]; they also are used to and want some of the gossip [around the game, the team, and individuals associated with it,] that you have to bring in as well. They care about this and that also enlarges the field of play for yourself.”
On the ground in Austria, three complete teams have worked in a shift fashion to cover all of ORF’s games. Explains Koegler: “We formed three teams. We have three hosts, three editors, and three directors. We have 52 games of the 104 – we split it with ServusTV – and so we made really tight teams and crews so that there’s no changes for them. Every day they have the same people, the same experts, the same hosts, with the same director, the same director’s assistant, the same editor in chief, so that they really can work tightly and prepare for the next day and so on. This is, I think, a quite useful decision to take.”
He adds: “Everything is being done here from ORF Centre, from off-tube studios commentating about the games, to discussing them in the studio.”
ORF has one ENG crew in the US which was covering the Austrian national team, and is still on the ground for the latter stages of the tournament.
The crew consists of two hosts, one pundit, one assistant, and a multi-talented person who is both directing and editing, plus two camera operators using LiveU’s. One younger reporter in the crew is focusing on social media content.
That team has covered the opening game and all Austrian team games, as well as the semi finals, and next up, the final.
ORF has no presence at the IBC for the World Cup. States Koegler: “Everything is coming via the feeds online; this is done really well using the cloud. You can download everything so you don’t have to be there anymore. Being at the IBC is history.”
Dealing with challenges
On the challenges with this World Cup for ORF, Koegler says: “The time difference and especially the situation with the kickoff times, which FIFA changed after the draw from the original plan, was a challenge. There was up to 13 different kickoff times and this is really ridiculous in some situations.”
On how ORF has dealt with those different kickoff times over the course of the tournament, Koegler comments: “We had to adapt the programme a lot. It gives different kinds of options. For example, there was an Austrian game which was in our hand, and it was a decisive game – the last game in the group versus Algeria – where we had almost no time for a pre-game show because there was another game immediately before, which lasted with extra time almost up to 40 minutes prior to kickoff.
“Then we had to go to a commercial start and all these things. So there is no time left for pre-show anymore, which is not good for us.”
To combat this type of situation, ORF enlarged its pre-game programmes in order to give the Austrian matches the weight they deserved, while also being able to cover the end of the game prior.
The biggest issue that the multiple kickoff times presents is that a regular daily highlights programme is almost impossible to put together in a traditional sense. Instead, ORF has been faced with using channels such as social media to really enable fans to stay updated with what has happened overnight in the US, Mexico and Canada, even though it has been producing a daily morning show aimed at picking out major highlights.
Says Koegler: “Whenever somebody wakes up, they want to see all the goals which have been taking place so far, and this is a real challenge; this is the thing which we are really focused on, and which we hope to try and to do our best to solve.
“We also have a morning show about the soccer every day, at 9am, but this is actually the biggest problem for us, to be honest. I think this is what will be getting [a lot of attention] during this world championships – even more than the last time – [so much so] that also on social media there is a lot of output planned, because people want to see the goals when they wake up. So this is the crucial point.”
The daily highlights show is not the traditional, highly analytic programme that ORF would normally produce, Koegler notes. “It’s on every day, but this daily highlights show is a little bit more relaxed, not as analytical, I would say, because it’s different kinds of hosts. But I think it’s necessary to have this on linear TV every day, and to be even quicker on the social media aspect with all the goals and dramatic scenes you want to see.”
