Sport on TV: New Heights Reached

On the occasion of the Sportel Monaco, Jacques Braun, Mediametrie’s International Director notes that « sport has never been followed more on TV and derives great benefit from the interest aroused by the new media to reach new audience records. TV will remain the n°1 medium to follow sport so long as main competitions are broadcast on free to air channels. This phenomenon intensifies when the national team qualifies. For example, this year in France, 75% of the population has been exposed at least once to a soccer World Cup match on television».

During major International sports events like Olympics, Soccer World Cup or Basketball World Championships, the sports programmes offer always expands on TV.

For example, in Italy it jumped from 3.6% of the total programming offer for the first 6 months of 2005 to 5.5% during the same period in 2006 thanks to the Olympics in Torino and also the soccer World Cup in Germany. As a consequence, during the period April to June 2006, 21.4% of the Italian TV consumption was dedicated to sport programmes.

A survey conducted by Mediametrie* shows that even if in France 9 out of 10 of the population aged 13 + uses at least 2 media in the same day, TV often appears as the exclusive media between 9pm and 11pm (generally the time for football matches).

Sports Internet websites also benefit from the soccer World Cup’s positive effects on consumption. Indeed, 62 million US net surfers have been in contact with a sports website during the month of June. In Europe, they were more than 13 million in Germany and more than 10 million in the United Kingdom.

Every year Eurodata TV Worldwide publishes its report « One TV Sport Year in the World”. This report studies international sport events like the soccer World Cup, the Formula One season and even the UEFA Champion’s League. New edition will be published in first quarter 2007.