Tune in or boycott - that's the big question for many football fans at the controversial World Cup in Qatar. In any case, a large part remained abstinent at the start: the opening game interested significantly fewer people in Germany than the first game of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

An average of 6.209 million people watched the game between hosts Qatar and Ecuador (0:2) on ZDF on Sunday afternoon, according to AGF video research. Four years earlier, an average of 10.01 million viewers had watched the opening match between hosts Russia and Saudi Arabia (5-0) on ARD.

The difference in market share was also clear. On Sunday it was 28.2 percent. In 2018 it was 52.0 percent on a Thursday. Both games kicked off in the afternoon. After 8 p.m. there are usually significantly more TV viewers. In 2014, by 10 p.m. in the evening, 15.87 million people had watched the opening game between Brazil and Croatia on ZDF and accounted for a market share of 62.4 percent.

It wasn't enough for the Qatar game on Sunday to win the day's most watched show either. 9.245 million people watched the "crime scene" on ARD at 8:15 p.m., almost a third more than the afternoon football game on ZDF. The market share for the "crime scene" was 29.8 percent.

However, the game of the hosts from Qatar was not particularly attractive from a sporting point of view. Even the local spectators left the stadium in Doha in droves after half-time. World Cup fever looks different. It will be seen on Wednesday whether the ratings for the games of the German team will also drop in this country. Then the national team around coach Hansi Flick intervenes in the tournament with their group game against Japan.