FIFA World Cup coverage - did old media or new media win?
July 11, 2006 – 2:56 pmIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I’ve seen some divergent viewpoints this week concerning how well FIFA World Cup coverage went for the old and new medias. The NYTimes, a bastion of old media power, says old media won it big. The conclusion isn’t surprising, people love to WATCH soccer. TV viewing was way up in all of Europe. The World Cup held up to the fragmentation that’s occuring everywhere. More channels generally means less viewers. Not true this time:
While most people still watch soccer on television, in their living room or in a pub, the 2006 tournament was the first World Cup in which some realistic alternatives emerged. In several countries, live video was available on the Internet. Elsewhere, games or highlights could be watched on mobile phones.
New media of course is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to video presentation. The technology is getting better, but isn’t perfect. To watch an entire soccer match, you’d have to assume almost everyone would prefer to sit on their big asses and watch on the largest screen they can find. HDTV comes to mind, as the FIFA was a big display of high-definition. But to discount the very real accomplishments of Yahoo and others for the tournament is not good.
The July 10th edition of Investor’s Business Daily portrays a much rosier portrait of Web 2.0 FIFA coerage. Yahoo’s Fifaworldcup.com displayed more than 70 million video hightlights of the event. They also reported that 1.13 million people visited the site daily. By any stretch of the imagination, the FIFA World Cup website (Yahoo ran it in partnership with FIFA) was a huge success and shows the future of media: a mix between old and new.
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