ITV

Tag: FIFA Women

  • BBC World News to showcase major sport events

    BBC World News to showcase major sport events

    MUMBAI: With the FIFA Women’s World Cup beginning in Canada this weekend, BBC World News TV and bbc.com/sport are gearing up to bring audiences a truly global perspective on sports.

     

    From football to Formula One, rugby to basketball and tennis to golf, the BBC’s international news services will be on hand to bring global audiences the action, expertise and analysis as well as capturing the passion of fans.

     

    The channel will showcase popular sporting shows such as Sport Today and Football Focus will have top interviews with former Open Golf champions Tom Watson and Greg Norman and football’s Alexis Sanchez (Arsenal, Chile), plus dedicated previews, highlights and specialist analysis of the most important moments in sport this season.

     

    Meanwhile audiences can also follow all the summer’s action with BBC Sport online with dedicated pages for all the sporting action, live text commentary of all the major events along with video, clips, news headlines, gossip and analysis. People can also follow the best of the sports on offer on Twitter and Facebook.

     

    Football will gear up for the FIFA Women’s World Cup followed by the UEFA Champions League Final and later witness Copa America.

     

    Tennis, on the other hand will showcase the Wimbledon, US Open and recaps from the action at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on BBC World News.

     

    While the channel aims to cater to all sport lovers, it couldn’t have missed the racers. Followers of Formula One can also expect to be kept up to date with every race throughout the summer, including the British Grand Prix from 3 – 5 July.

     

    On the Golf front, Sport Today Extra will be in the presence of golfing royalty this summer as the team interview golfing legends and former Open champions, Tom Watson and Greg Norman on 11 July and 8 August respectively. It will be followed by the 144th Open Golf Championship, live from St Andrews from 16 – 18 July on BBC World News TV.

     

    Some of the events in cycling and cricket get underway in July, with the Tour de France commencing on 4 July and the Ashes series between England and Australia starting in Cardiff on 8 July.

     

    It will also show some Sailing events like ‘The Spirit of Yachting’, some athletics with World Athletics Championships in Beijing and the Diamond League and Rugby events like the Rugby World Cup in September this year.

  • Fifa Women’s World Cup sets new TV viewing records

    Fifa Women’s World Cup sets new TV viewing records

    MUMBAI: Soccer’s governing body Fifa has announced that the Women’s World Cup Germany 2011 has set a new benchmark for the sport after viewers around the world tuned in en masse and smashed several TV audience records along the way.


    This was particularly notable in the host nation Germany, the defending champions twice over, as well as in the countries of the two finalists, the USA and Japan.


    The four games featuring the German team all gained average audiences of more than 14 million, with their final three matches attracting averages of over 16 million viewers nationwide – by far the highest audiences on record for Fifa Women’s World Cup matches in Germany.


    An average audience of over 17 million people watched Germany bow out to Japan, representing nearly a quarter of the German population.


    To put these figures into context, an average German audience of 15.5 million watched the recent Klitschko v. Haye World Championship boxing match in Hamburg, Germany, and an average of 14.8 million watched Germany v. Serbia at the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa.
     
    The German audiences for the Fifa Women’s World Cup are also the highest audiences for any sporting programme in the market since the final in 2010.


    Fifa TV director Niclas Ericson said, “These are solid figures on their own, but when you put them into context with other major sports events they emphatically underline that the FIFA Women’s World Cup was an exceptionally popular spectacle for TV viewers.”


    In the US, an average audience of over 14.1 million watched the final between the US and Japan.


    ESPN delivered the large majority of the audience, reporting an average of close to 13.5 million and a peak audience during the penalty shoot-out of over 21.1 million. This is ESPN’s highest-ever audience for a football match and ranks as the second-highest audience for a daytime telecast in US cable history (behind the 2011 Rose Bowl). These audiences were also over three times higher than the US average audience for the final round of golf’s Open Championship on Sunday, as well as nearly 10 per cent higher than the audience for baseball’s All Star Game last week.


    Newly crowned world champions Japan also achieved record audiences at home for the final despite the match airing in the early hours of Monday morning. An average audience of 10.4 million watched Japan beat the USA, while a peak audience of over 15 million witnessed the penalty shoot-out. This audience is more than three times higher than the previous record for a women’s football match in Japan set by the semi-final last week, and it is more than 50 per cent higher than the audience in Japan for the final of the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa. This also compares favourably to Japanese audiences for other major sporting events, including The Masters golf tournament.


    In France, a record audience was set for the France v. USA match, with an average audience of over 2.3 million tuning in. This is more than double the previous record for a women’s football match in the market, which had been set for the France v. England quarter-final earlier in the tournament. The audience in France peaked at nearly 3.3 million towards the end of the France v. USA match.