When was the World Cup first shown on television?

Television had begun to appear in homes around the world in the years after the Second World War, but it was still a new technology in 1954, the year Switzerland hosted the World Cup. That tournament became the first ever shown on TV. Cameras were set up at the matches, and the games were broadcast to viewers in a small number of European countries that had access to receivers and a working signal. For the first time, World Cup football could be watched live by people who were not at the stadium.

For the first three World Cups — 1930, 1934, and 1938 — there were no television broadcasts at all. Fans followed the tournaments through radio commentary, which carried the action live to listeners in many countries, and through reports printed in newspapers a day or more after each match. Photographs of key moments were sometimes the only images most fans ever saw of the actual football. Within this older information world, the World Cup was still a huge event, but it was an event that millions of people experienced mostly by ear and on the page.

Once television had its foothold in 1954, World Cup coverage grew enormously with each cycle. The 1966 tournament in England was beamed across more countries; by 1970, the World Cup in Mexico reached a worldwide audience and was the first to be broadcast in colour. By the 1990s, the tournament had become one of the most watched events on Earth, and modern finals routinely reach more than a billion viewers. Every step of that growth traces back to the 1954 broadcasts that quietly proved it was possible.

This article was written using information from Wikipedia.