Hot Topic - World Cup

Huge Audiences, Vuvuzelas And Jabulanis, Ambush Marketing Resulting In A South Africa-Netherlands Diplomatic Spat And A Fired TV Pundit – And That Was Just Week One Of The World Cup! - June 17, 2010
The world is football (soccer) mad. There’s no denying it. For many World Cup participating countries, although still not the US, when their games are on TV more than half the population watch. Note we particularly say watch since hearing is another matter as we all welcomed to the land of the vuvuzela.

England Mourns As Its Soccer Team Fails To Qualify For The Euro Championships, But It Is The UK’s Commercial TV Network Really Weeping As It Sees Up To £15 Million ($30 Million) Slipping Through Its Fingers - November 23, 2007
The big deal in television broadcasting these days is sports. Advertisers are willing to pay premium rates to get in on the big games. Rupert Murdoch said that Fox Sports recently got $3 million for a 30-second ad on the 2008 Super Bowl telecast

The World Cup Brings Advertising Riches To Some, But Not To All - July 13, 2006
China wasn’t even in the World Cup, and the tournament was held mostly in Chinese morning hours, but its web sites cleaned up big-time with huge advertising profits. For some European countries, the television advertising revenues could benefit by as much as 4%, but in others, including the UK, the World Cup has had a negligible effect on television advertising. And the ratings in the US for some of the games matched major domestic sporting events.

BSkyB Agrees To Pay An Average £4.76 million ($8.9 million) to Televise Exclusively, Including Broadband, Each of 92 UK Premier League Football Matches Per Season From 2007 – 2010, But Mobile Operators Say Football Is Getting Too Expensive For Their Tastes - May 8, 2006
The UK’s Premier League has just sold domestic television and broadband rights to its matches in 2007 –2010 to BSkyB and Irish broadcaster Setanta for a total of £1.706 billion ($3.27 billion) – a 60% premium over the last deal won exclusively by Sky in 2003.

FIFA Capitulates, Agrees There Should Be No Coverage Distinction Between Text and Pictures, And Allows Real-Time Unlimited World Cup Internet Coverage For Both - March 14, 2006
It was a battle of business titans – FIFA, football’s governing body, wanted to protect its own commercial World Cup Internet interests by forcing the media to accept accreditation rules that prohibited any match picture appearing on the Internet until after the final whistle. The world’s media joined together in refusing FIFA’s terms, threatening freedom of the press issues, getting governments involved, and warning FIFA commercial sponsors of media difficulties ahead. Result: FIFA hoisted the white flag. No need for a penalty shootout – it’s the World’s Media 1, FIFA 0.

See also in ftm Knowledge...

The Games People Watch

Media and sports are a powerful combination. Together they capture huge audiences and considerable money. This ftm Knowledge file looks at the competition from football rights battles and cycling coverage with new media to the Olympic Games. 60 pages PDF (September 2009)

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