• International Herald Tribune, Monday, July 10, 2006 10:31 AM

“On the playing field, the World Cup soccer tournament produced only one winner, but in the marketing arena the biggest media event of the year created more opportunities for glory--as well as a few disappointments,” writes Eric Pfanner in the International Herald Tribune. One winner was “old media”: “At a time when many viewers are turning away from mainstream media, the World Cup demonstrates the continuing power of live sports events to pull in the mass audiences that advertisers crave,” Pfanner notes. According to one analyst, through the semifinals, television audiences in 49 of the largest markets rose an average of 15 percent from the last World Cup. One reason for the increase was a more favorable time zone for viewers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas: The 2002 Cup was played in South Korea and Japan. But, compared with the 1998 World Cup in France, which was played in the same time zone as this year's tournament, average audiences were down by 3 percent to 5 percent. Still, with many more TV channels available in Europe, “the World Cup has done better than a lot of other programming in dealing with fragmentation,’” says Kevin Alavy of Initiative in London.

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