Page 122 - Sport Culture and the Media

MONEY, MYTH AND THE BIG MATCH || 103

These impressive figures make the 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan 
the most extensively covered and viewed event in television history. Despite
the time difference between Asia and the major football continents of
Europe and South America, record audiences and market shares were
reached in many countries...
Viewers the world over demonstrated their willingness to trade sleep for
soccer and change their viewing habits and daily routine in order to watch

the FIFA World Cup . In terms of viewer hours, calculated as the total
number of hours watched by all viewers, this year’s tournament set a new
record for a sports event of 49.2 billion worldwide...
Out-of-home viewing contributed to the 2002 Final being the most

viewed match in FIFA World Cup history, with 1.1 billion individuals
watching this game...
Soccer has long been seen as the perfect vehicle for sponsors to deliver
messages to the dream male demographic, but statistics for the 2002 FIFA

World Cup indicate that women’s interest in the tournament is growing
rapidly. For example in Japan, the audience split for the whole of the
tournament was virtually even, at 51% men, 49% women. The FIFA World

Cup attracts audiences outside the typically male-dominated arena of
sports broadcasting...
Excluding China, the total global audience has increased by 431 million
viewers over France 98.
(FIFA 2002)

These statistics show vast numbers of men and women coming together before
the television screens in their homes, commercial premises and public sites
to watch football. Of the many figures produced, my personal favourite is
the 94.2 per cent market share gained by Brazil’s TV Globo when covering the
England versus Brazil match (46 million viewers and a 30.2 per cent rating). The
game took place at 3.30 am local time (FIFA 2002). It is important for inter-
national sporting bodies like FIFA to capture and promote these impressive
numbers as they represent a massively lucrative lure for the purchase of broad-
cast and sponsorship rights and a powerful statement that they do, indeed,
control ‘the world game’. The IOC, as operators of rival mega-media sports
spectacles, make similar claims to the global status of Summer and Winter
Olympics. There is, consequently, a strong incentive to massage and inflate the
‘guesstimate’ figures that are spread around the world and become authoritative
through repetition. Thus, for example, it has been claimed that 1 billion people
watched the Opening Ceremony of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, then the ‘largest
television audience in history’ (Rogers 1993: xiii) until exceeded by the Opening
Ceremonies of the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics, with their