"Yearly Sport Key Facts"

On the occasion of Sportel Monaco, the international sports convention for television & new media, Eurodata TV Worldwide Vice-President Jacques Braun spoke at the "Sport and Television: the economic crisis, the broadcasters, the sport bodies" conference held on Tuesday October 13th 2009. According to him "Sport was, is and will continue to be a blue-chip stock of TV audiences despite TV audience fragmentation. Sport Bodies draw ideas from fiction by adding suspense, frequency and dramatization to their competitions to further increase their audience-pulling power.

Back in 1994, the best rated program in the USA was the Olympic Games ice skating competition with 79.6 million viewers on CBS! Incredibly, this primetime broadcast was actually a delayed transmission as the Games took place in Lillehammer! 15 years on, the Superbowl broadcast on NBC in 2009 scored an amazing audience of 98.7 million. In Spain, broadcasters directly benefit from the success of the country's national teams on every field : Cuatro recorded the best ever rate program gathering 14.5 millions fans for the UEFA European Championships final."

Throughout the September 2008 - October 2009 season, sport programming continued to bring together large audiences. Whether on generalist or thematic channels, sport is broadcast and watched more and more. Among the 31 countries covered by the "Yearly Sport Key Facts", football was again the most consumed sport with 24% of the average TV viewer's daily viewing time dedicated to this sport.

In France, cycling continues to summon the general public. On generalist channels, viewers dedicated 17% of their average daily viewing time to cycling mostly due to the Tour de France, whereas it represents only 11 % of the sport offer.

In India, the market is dominated by cricket as it represents more than 95% of the sport offer among generalist broadcasters.

Athletics appears in the German sport landscape with 6% for both offer and consumption thanks to the World Championships that were held in Berlin during the month of August 2009.

Only a few weeks before the Winter Olympic Games which will be taking place in Vancouver Canada, viewers from the future host country dedicated 66% of their daily viewing time to winter sports, close to the 72% for football in Portugal!

European viewers already dedicated a large part of their daily viewing time to winter sports during this year of world championships: nordic skiing in Liberec, biathlon in Pyeongchang and alpine skiing in Vald'Isère. The average percentage of their time spent watching winter sport on TV was of 29% (figure based on generalist broadcasters' data for Austria, Finland, Germany, Norway, Poland and Russia).

The Yearly Sport Key Facts is the new report published by Eurodata TV Worldwide covering September 2008 to August 2009. It reviews the achievements of international competitions such as the UEFA Champions League, Rugby Six Nations 2009, World Championships 2009 but also of major national competitions. It analyses key points to remember for each country and performances of sport broadcasts.