Even with fun, new-fangled ways to share experiences, such as Twitter and Facebook, even with online and with the 2010 FIFA World Cup haven taken place right here in our own country, big international sporting events belong to television.

You might have sprung the cash to go see two or three live games during the tournament but most of us caught the action on the telly in our own homes or at pubs and fan parks. Which is why Sunday’s world cup final – the peculiar heavy-breathing world feed commentator John Helm aside – between Spain and the Netherlands broke broadcasting records around the globe. Among them:

* 700-million people watched the game globally, according to FIFA, which is more than the 600 million who watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
* A record average of 16-million people in Spain watched the game on the three channels broadcasting the match in the country.
* In the UK, the BBC’s audience was million, compared with 3.3 million for ITV – the state broadcaster’s biggest audience for a world cup final since France 1998.
* Even in the US, where football is viewed largely as a game for girls, 24 million people watched the final – a record audience for the broadcast of a soccer game in the country.

It would make Arthur C Clarke proud and here in South Africa we’re likely to produce record-breakers, too, although the finalised TAMS numbers for the Spain-Netherlands clash from the South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF) were not available at the time of writing. In-home figures for the two semifinals, however, show that 10.344 million South Africans watched the Uruguay-Netherlands game and 10.279 million watched the Germany-Spain match.

Likewise, the numbers for the final at DStv’s SuperSport – which held the exclusive pay-TV rights for the world cup for Africa – are being finalised, but it looks like it’s shaping up to be a best-ever: 1.433 million households, not taking into account out-of-home viewers. Clinton van der Berg, SuperSport International’s communications manager, says this would put the South African audience for the world cup final higher than the recent Super14 rugby final in Soweto (1.299 million households) and the South Africa-Mexico opening World Cup game (1.247 million).

According to SAARF TAMS figures, 10.15 million South Africans watched the crucial South Africa-Uruguay match in which we were exited from the tournament, while 10.06 million caught the SA-Mexico game and then 9.5 million of us tuned in to support the last African team standing, Ghana, when it played Uruguay in the knockout phase.

Incredible as these figures are, one wonders if it has translated into lots of lovely lolly in advertising revenue. Was this the media bonanza many were hoping for? Independent media planner (and football fan of note) Gordon Muller thinks not. The SABC ad rates were prohibitively high for many advertisers, he says, and the broadcast rights came at a pretty penny. He believes outdoor advertising firms and those not having to pay for media rights, such as newspapers, scored the most out of this world cup… Click here to read the full column at Bizcommunity.

UPDATE: Since the writing of this column, Saarf released the TAMS stats (compiled by Nielsen) for the Spain-Netherlands final:

Johannesburg, July, 14 2010 – As 11 059 000 South Africans – some 33.1% of the nation* – sat down to watch the final of Africa’s first FIFA World Cup on television, 1 883 000 Irish people did the same, topping the list for reach of population with 45.7%.

Possibly buoyed by their team’s great start to the tournament, 39 202 000 Americans – over 13% – topped the list of sheer numbers watching the final, with Italian supporters coming in second at 24 697 000 – more than 43% of that country’s population. Mexicans numbered 16 131 000 viewers (31.8% reach), taking third place for individual supporters watching TV.

With a slightly higher reach of 43.8%, Swedish numbers translated to 3 948 000 viewers, and 3 966 000 Hungarians also lent their support to the spectacle.

Nielsen says some 14 421 000 Indonesians (29.1%) also had the TV tuned to see who would be crowned world champions and Croatians, too, were keen to see the final, with 1 748 000 or 42.3% of the population cheering a team on. Poland’s marginally lower reach of 42.1% translated to more individual viewers than Croatia, at 15 145 000.

Fans from Armenia and Moldova numbered 544 000 and 879 000 respectively; while Georgia and Azerbaijan transmitted the match to 467 000 and 905 000 respectively. With a large number of viewers throughout the competition, Thailand viewers numbered 8 654 000 for the final.

New Zealand’s 937 000 viewers comprised 23.4% of its population, while Australia’s 9.2% reach saw 1 371 000 fans watching. Nielsen reports that 3 159 000 South Koreans cheered the game, while just over half that number of Taiwanese football fans – 1 110 000 – did the same. Puerto Rico’s 877 000 viewers translates to 23.1% of its population and Cyprus’s 292 000 meant 38.5% of its people saw the final.

Across 30 countries, it’s estimated that 164 963 000 in-home viewers saw Spain defeat the Dutch by one goal to nil – and receive a hero’s welcome in Barcelona.

*Source: SAARF TAMS

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Oops. Wrong end.

I’m happy to say I’m now World Cup befok, staring down the bright yellow orb of my newly-acquired vuvuzela. I can’t wait for the upwelling of national pride, the festivities and the heart-stopping penalty shoot-outs. And, media houses, take note, though I normally have absolutely no interest in soccer or sport in general, I’m ready to start consuming stories on the 2010 FIFA World Cup teams, coaches and the expectations of the various participating nations.
Now if only I could lay my hands on some coverage.

Where is it all? Hidden on the sports pages of my daily newspaper? I seldom go there but, quite frankly, I would have expected shameless reams of world cup sports copy on the news and features pages by now. There is, after all, only 22 days to go.

Nevertheless, preparations by media houses across the land to cover the world cup have been on the go for a while – some started the planning as much as a year ago – and many a hope has been pinned on a turn-up in advertising revenue on the back of the event, especially after marketing budgets were slashed last year amid the recession.

But as early as March this year, there were signs that the tournament might not be an early Christmas and that many local advertisers were holding back on spending during the event as they feared being lost amid all the footie clutter.

Virginia Hollis, joint MD of The MediaShop, one of South Africa’s biggest media-planning firms, says that, besides increased expenditure from official sponsors such as MTN and Coca-Cola, she hasn’t seen the expected upsurge in advertising. In the first three months of this year, there was an increase in television advertising -and also in radio – but this came off a low base because adspend was so decimated last year. Hollis expects advertising to pick up in August, when advertisers feel more confident about reaching SA audiences without having to cut through the soccer clutter… TO READ THE FULL COLUMN, “THE WORD ON GRUBSTREET”, CLICK HERE TO GO TO BIZCOMMUNITY.

* This was published first on Bizcommunity, on May 19 2010.

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A move by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to regulate the highly lucrative business of sports broadcasting rights came closer to policy last week as the deadline for submission on Icasa’s “preliminary findings and conclusions” closed on Friday.

The arena for this battle – and don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t a battle – has been Icasa and though the submissions to the regulator from the public and stakeholders are as dry as toast, blood pressure is up on all sides. The money is big and the stakes are high.

On the one hand, there is the government’s determination not to allow pay-TV operations to acquire exclusive rights to broadcast national sporting events that all South Africans should be able to watch and enjoy – and, crucially, for children on all backgrounds to be inspired to grow up to be national sporting heroes.

There are also the national sports bodies, which rely on money from broadcast rights for an average 60% of their revenue. Internationally, sports bodies’ revenue comes from – in descending order of importance – broadcasting rights, sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandising and government subsidies and grants, according to Amanda Armstrong, a director and law specialist in telecommunications and broadcasting at Werksmans Attorneys. In South Africa, the government’s contribution was less than 1% of the annual revenue of most sports bodies in 2008.

There are the free-to-air channels, e.tv and the SABC, for which there are obvious commercial gains – both in terms of audience and advertising – if they can get the first option to bid without competition from pay-TV operations for more live sport. SABC and e.tv say – a tad sanctimoniously – in their Icasa submissions that the “… the broadcast of key sporting events on pay-TV has a negative impact on the participation of many South Africans in sport and could undermine the transformation in sport”. But free-to-air channels can often struggle to find air space to broadcast live events amid their local content programming. It’s worth noting, for instance, that the tripartite agreement between the PSL, SuperSport and the SABC (struck after SuperSport snapped up the exclusive rights in 2007 for the PSL from SABC), the public broadcaster was in fact required to broadcast more games than it did in the previous season when it held all the PSL rights.

The last players in this drama are the pay-TV operators such as DStv’s SuperSport as well as the new guys on the block, ODM and Super 5 Media, which are expected to launch this year. SuperSport, which coughed up about R2bn for the exclusive broadcast rights of PSL soccer games over five years, is hugely concerned about the current Icasa review. Chiefly, the problem is that there’s no point is spending large sums of money if you can’t get them exclusively… TO READ THE FULL COLUMN, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MONEYWEB.

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