Attended a thought-provoking presentation from Gene Detroyer earlier this week on global demographic changes. Part of Detroyer’s presentation went something like this:
First question: How many people watched the 2014 Super Bowl?
Answer: About 111 million
Second question: How many people are expected to watch the final match of the 2014 World Cup?
Answer: Well over 1 billion. In fact, each match in 2010 averaged 188 million viewers, and is expected to be higher for the 2014 Cup!
In the U.S., the Super Bowl is the biggest annual media event. We in the U.S. tend to think of ourselves as the center of the universe — kind of like the old Greek Ptolomaic view of the solar system, in which everything revolved around the Earth. The U.S. was such a huge influence and such a major economic driver for the past 50 years or so that it seemed the world really did revolve around the U.S.
But the reality is that this is changing rapidly.
The U.S. middle class, the main driving force behind the engine of the country’s economy, is steadily shrinking. And even if it wasn’t, the middle classes of other nations are growing much faster.
Below is a chart comparing the world middle class in 2010 with the projections for 2050. Although the resolution isn’t great, the darkest band is the United States — showing that as a % of world middle class consumption, America is rapidly becoming less relevant. Instead, experts from Goldman Sachs, Ernst & Young, the Brookings Institute, and the OECD all agree that the growing middles classes in China (dark brown) and India (orange) are quickly become where the action is.
And the 2014 World Cup is a reminder of this. The Super Bowl isn’t the big event anymore — the World Cup is. And in our near future, the U.S. (and note also Europe and Japan) will have less buying power and less influence over the world economy, and India, China, and other countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand, as well as several in Latin America, will have far more.
It’s a sobering thought, but out of change comes opportunities. U.S. companies and entrepreneurs can either pretend it’s not happening, or find ways to jump on the opportunity. Just as with the World Cup this time around, media and advertisers have decided to just jump aboard the train and take advantage of the opportunities.
What about you? Are you planning for this future and finding ways to jump on the train, too?
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