July 10, 2006 5:32 PM

ABC's performance analyzed

By Richard Sandomir
New York Times News Service

The quadrennial visit of the World Cup must be viewed as a television success story. The final on Sunday attracted 16.9 million viewers, and the star of stars, Zinedine Zidane of France, morphed from magician to the soccer equivalent of Mike Tyson with his overtime head butt of Marco Materazzi.

Those 16.9 million viewers included 11.9 million on ABC and 5 million on Univision, and they represented a 152 percent leap from 2002, when the game in Japan was shown in the morning. The audience was 31 percent better than eight years ago from France, and it was on par with 1994 from Pasadena, Calif.

This year’s viewership — tough to achieve at 2 p.m. Eastern time on a Sunday — exceeded by about 4 million the average audience last month for the NBA finals between the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks. It also came close to the 17.5 million for Florida’s victory over UCLA in the NCAA men’s basketball championship game and the 17.1 million average for the Chicago White Sox’ sweep of the Houston Astros in the World Series last October.

Still, the 16.9 million was a million short of the viewership for the United States’ penalty-kick win over China in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final at the Rose Bowl.

Nothing matches Super Bowl viewership; when Pittsburgh defeated Seattle in February, 91 million people tuned in.

But around the world, the World Cup makes the Super Bowl look tiny. Depending on two various estimates, anywhere from 300 million to more than 1 billion people will have watched Italy win its fourth World Cup on Sunday.

“The World Cup final has the single largest global audience in sports,” Kevin Alavy, a senior analyst for the media agency Initiative Futures Worldwide, said from London. “It doubles the audience for the Olympic opening ceremony in Athens and triples the Super Bowl.”Initiative and Sponsorship Intelligence, the agency hired by FIFA’s marketer, Infront Sports, are in a research spat.

Initiative estimates that 300 million watched the final and 5.9 billion will have watched the World Cup. Sponsorship Intelligence expects at least a billion for the final and more than 30 billion for the full event — nearly five times the total number of earthlings.

Initiative counts only the live World Cup coverage; Sponsorship Intelligence counts the live coverage and replays and highlights shown in news and magazine shows. Both count the same people over and over, leading to the big numbers.

Some games preceding the final had a world audience exceeding 200 million, said Andy Kowalczyk, deputy managing director of Sponsorship.

Alavy said 84 percent of the televisions in use in Italy, and 80 percent of those being viewed in France, were watching the game Sunday.

ESPN and ESPN2, which averaged viewership of 2.3 million and 1.1 million, far exceeded the expectations of Major League Soccer, whose marketing arm bought the television rights, sold the advertising and paid ESPN’s production costs.

“We outdelivered our guarantees by 100 percent,” said Don Garber, the MLS commissioner.
ABC’s average viewership, before the final, had already swelled by 125 percent to 1.7 million from 2002.

Granted, four years ago, viewing in the United States was hampered by the Asian time zone. But Artie Bulgrin, ESPN’s senior vice president for research, said ESPN did much better than during the 1998 World Cup in France.

“This year, we had 20 telecasts on ESPN, and 17 did a rating of 1.0 or better, and in 1998, only seven out of 27 did a 1.0 or better,” he said. “Only one match in 1998 did a 2.0 or better, and this year, seven did.” Garber must now determine how to capitalize, whether through improving the U.S.team, bettering the broadcasts or investing heavily in luring major international stars to MLS.

“The market’s there,” he said. “We didn’t build this. We put on the games, and 17 million watched.” But as ESPN looks to the next World Cup, in South Africa in 2010, it must change a few tactics: 1. Sure, there are no in-game stoppages for commercials, but larding the pre-game and halftime shows with ads creates disjointed jumbles. On Sunday, some segments lasted as little as 10, 20, and 41 seconds.

2. Revel in the festivities. Univision, not ABC, carried the pregame show by Wyclef Jean and Shakira and the halftime singing of Placido Domingo. And ABC sinned by joining the Italian national anthem in progress.

3. Don’t lead in to any match, let alone the third-place game, with a rerun of the 2005 All-Star home run derby, as ESPN did Saturday. The host country’s last game wasn’t worth a nice little pregame auf wiedersehen?

4. Restrain the visuals. Curb the drop-down graphics that block the field. Cut out urgent alerts like Sunday’s telling ABC viewers to watch the Western Open on ESPN. The government’s terrorism warnings are more subtle.

5. Nurture a new generation of announcers. Naming a fine baseball announcer like Dave O’Brien to be the lead soccer voice only put a target on his back from the chattering bloggers. Teach analysts to explain nuances and tell stories better. And hand them a 21st-century Telestrator.

6. Follow up stories. When Zidane was red-carded, ABC’s Marcelo Balboa said he believed the referee wrongly made the call based on watching the stadium replay. Where was Jeremy Schaap when we needed him?

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