The World Cup Brings Advertising Riches To Some, But Not To All

According to the Shanghai Securities News, World Cup advertising profits accounted for about 50% of the total revenues for major Chinese portals during the tournament. Sohu, for instance, is said to have made a €5 million profit on its World Cup advertising. AC Nielsen had predicted before the tournament began that China would gain some €15 million in World Cup advertising revenues.

ZenithOptimedia the day after the World Cup ended increased its 2006 global advertising growth forecast to 6.1% from its previous 6% given in April. Television advertising in the Netherlands is expected to grow 4%, in France, 3.5%; and in Belgium, 3.4%. Italy, the Cup winners, should see a 2.5% increase.

But in Germany the games were on public television and they are limited in how much advertising time they can sell so there will be little difference there.

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Its World Cup Fever Time, Especially For The TV Licensing Folk Who Say Watch It On Broadband At Work and The Employer Better Have A TV License Or Else! TV viewing numbers for this year’s World Cup Football are as much as double the last tournament four years ago, and this time around mobile and broadband coverage is expected to increase viewership a whole lot more, but in those countries where a TV license is mandatory the authorities say they are serious about fining employers who let staff watch the games via broadband on their office PC if there is no TV license.

With More than 2 Billion Mobile Phone Users in the World Of Which 236 Million Use 3G, Can Advertisers Be Very Far Behind? It’s already well understood that advertising money is flowing away from traditional media to more unconventional channels, and a survey by eMarketeer points out that the two tactics that advertisers want to experiment with this year over any other are video and the mobile phone.

Regulators Work Together For Digital Solutions
Nine European media regulators are beginning an ambitious project to coordinate digital strategies. Working in four distinct geographic “sub-projects,” German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian authorities are meeting regularly to “build a new architecture of inter-working media services by inter-working infrastructures of broadcasting and telecommunications for the media needs of a mobile Information society,” explained Dr. Peter Kettner, DMB Project Manager with Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (BLM), Germany.

Malta Unites As Broadcasting Authority Opens World Cup Finals Don't tell Sepp Blatter or he'll invent a new fee. World Cup 2006 fever is forcing media, regulators and rights holders to give the public what it wants. Look how quickly digital TV and mobile TV is appearing. Even “old” TV problems are fixed, too. Best of all, there are gems of wisdom coming from this fast, under-pressure thinking.

FIFA Capitulates, Agrees There Should Be No Coverage Distinction Between Text and Pictures, And Allows Real-Time Unlimited World Cup Internet Coverage For Both 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.

And in the UK, the sluggish year for commercial ITV continues to be even more sluggish. It shared coverage with the commercial-free BBC and the public broadcaster had the rights to the Sunday night final. Result: BBC, 14 million viewers; ITV 2,8 million. It capped ITV’s worst-ever week in which its overall audience share was just 16.6%.

Many retailers tied promotions to their country winning World Cup games. In Switzerland, for instance, the day after Switzerland won a game the Co-Op Supermarket chain tripled the number of points it gave shoppers that could be used for a multitude of rewards. But in Italy, Media World embarked on a promotion that is going to cost it big-time: It told shoppers who bought a new TV during the Cup that if Italy won then the chain would give them coupons in the amount they paid for the TV. And that that means about 10,000 Italians are collecting coupons worth around €10 million.

Some of the fiercest advertising wars during the Cup came from sports equipment makers. Adidas was an official sponsor but Puma and Nike sponsored individual players and teams. And Puma had the last laugh – it sponsored the winning Italian team.

But perhaps the most spectacular television numbers for the World Cup comes from the most unlikely place – the US. While it seems that in many communities many young kids play in soccer leagues something happens by the time they become adults and soccer has never made a lasting impression in the US. But this year it did.

Nearly 12 million watched the final on ABC at 2 p.m. Eastern time on a Sunday afternoon. Another five million watched the game on Spanish-speaking Univision. No doubt Italian-Americans watched en masse on ABC, but those numbers mean far more was happening out there. America is a melting pot, and for many of those countries in that melting pot football (ok, soccer) is the top sport. This game tripled the audience from the 2002 tournament.

Last November ABC and Univision took a bit of a gamble, paying a record $425 million for World Cup and other FIFA tournaments from 2007 until 2014. It was FIFA’s largest deal for just one country. Results from this year’s tournament indicate it may not have been such a gamble after all and no doubt sponsors such as Yahoo, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Anheuser-Busch believe they got their money’s worth and the advertising rates for soccer will now be pointing north.

Univision's three television and cable networks pulled in 50 million viewers during the three weeks of the tournament and about 40% were thought not to be Hispanic. Those are good numbers particularly considering that Argentina and Brazil faired far more poorly than predicted. Not including the final game, ABC averaged 2.9 million homes for each broadcast, more than double from 2002 when the tournaments was hosted in Japan and S. Korea and the playing times were US early morning.

Putting the numbers for the final into perspective, combine the ABC and Univision numbers for 17 million total viewers, and that’s on par for a World Series baseball game and about four million more than the NBA basketball finals, and its 4 million more than who watched in the UK.

On the other hand, about 90 million viewers watched the Super Bowl last February, so soccer still has a ways to go!