FIFA reveals game times for FIFA World Cup

[scmcbride21]

Game times will be 1p.m., 4p.m. and 8:30p.m. local time for South Africa.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=2731137&brand=null&videoId=3690512&n8pe6c=1

[soccerislife7]

For lazy people like myself, thats 6 AM, 9 AM and 1:30 PM (Eastern).

Sucks for those folks on the West Coast, although ESPN'll probably have some kind of tape delay

[scmcbride21]

I'm in the central time zone and that's 5a.m., 8a.m., and 12:30p.m. I'll either be waking up early like I did for the Olympics and Korea/Japan or just recording that 5a.m. match. And hopefully ESPN won't give out the result during the 8a.m. match. Then I'll watch the 5a.m. match at 10a.m. after the 8a.m. match and before the 12:30p.m. match.

[almango]

9PM, midnight and 4:30AM for us. I guess the knockout games will still have the 4:30AM start with maybe a 12:30AM start for the other one

[scmcbride21]

I haven't heard anything from FIFA about knockout round game times, but rumor has it will most likely be 4p.m. and either 8 or 8:30p.m. local time.

[Pit-182]

Game times will be 1p.m., 4p.m. and 8:30p.m. local time for South Africa.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=2731137&brand=null&videoId=3690512&n8pe6c=1
Why did they change that? Wasn't it 3, 6 and 9 pm? It kicked ass!

[scmcbride21]

Why did they change that? Wasn't it 3, 6 and 9 pm? It kicked ass!

If you listen to that video that I linked. The guy explains that the World Cup will take place in the winter South Africa time. To compensate for temperature and rainfall they normally get during the winter months..... they will have two earlier games and then compromised with only one world prime time slot.

[Habitat]

I'll be playing in it. Forget watching :P - *keeps fingers crossed*

[Prime Time]

Good information to know. This is great news to me as I work in the afternoons and was already thinking of having to take days off to watch USA play. But then again, who knows if I'll be at this job a year and a half from now.

[Dwbakke]

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/tournament/preliminarydraw/64/42/24/2010fwc_matchschedule_1103.pdf

The match schedule has games at 13:30, not 13:00. I don't know which is right, though, since they've been saying 13:00 for a long time now. Also, knockout round games at 16:00 and 20:30

[scmcbride21]

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/tournament/preliminarydraw/64/42/24/2010fwc_matchschedule_1103.pdf

The match schedule has games at 13:30, not 13:00. I don't know which is right, though, since they've been saying 13:00 for a long time now. Also, knockout round games at 16:00 and 20:30

I would tend to go with what FIFA's documents are, but I know as for game times some match times listed might change to accomodate tv. What this means as they'd try and put Asian teams at 13:30p.m. and Western Hemisphere teams at 20:30p.m. To accomodate tv for these teams. I hope what I said there made sense. I found it hard to find the words to explain what I was saying here.

[Dwbakke]

I would tend to go with what FIFA's documents are, but I know as for game times some match times listed might change to accomodate tv. What this means as they'd try and put Asian teams at 13:30p.m. and Western Hemisphere teams at 20:30p.m. To accomodate tv for these teams. I hope what I said there made sense. I found it hard to find the words to explain what I was saying here.

No, I know what you mean. They switched some games' start times after the draw in 06, including Italy-USA, Brazil-Croatia (they even swapped the day of that one with Australia-Japan), and a bunch of others, for TV purposes. It generally was to put the top seeded teams in the late start times, though, which, if you look at the match schedule for South Africa, the organizers there have mostly already done. So I think we'll see fewer switches in 2010 compared to the schedule they've got out there right now.

[Gold is the Colour]

9PM, midnight and 4:30AM for us. I guess the knockout games will still have the 4:30AM start with maybe a 12:30AM start for the other one

7pm, 10pm and 2:30am for the west coast (Perth):cool:

Why the big gap between the 2nd and 3rd games??

[scmcbride21]

7pm, 10pm and 2:30am for the west coast (Perth):cool:

Why the big gap between the 2nd and 3rd games??

For the prime time world market. Which is basically so it is in prime time at night for Europe. And that time makes it easily watcheable for countries in the Western Hemisphere. Because the game time will be around noon.

[almango]

7pm, 10pm and 2:30am for the west coast (Perth):cool:

Why the big gap between the 2nd and 3rd games??

So us east coasters can get a couple of hours sleep between matches.

[Gold is the Colour]

For the prime time world market. Which is basically so it is in prime time at night for Europe. And that time makes it easily watcheable for countries in the Western Hemisphere. Because the game time will be around noon.

They didn't do it for Germany (approx. same time zone)

[Apalisoc_9]

This is great news for me!! the only time that would be hard is the 8pm cuz thats 1am here in the philippines.

[Dwbakke]

They didn't do it for Germany (approx. same time zone)

Germany had games at 3, 6, and 9 PM local time. The latest game was still about the same as South Africa's latest game (prime time in Europe). The earlier two games in 2010 will be earlier because it is winter, and will be light and warmer earlier. In Germany, in the summer, warmth and daylight weren't issues. But South Africa has kept the prime time tv game, and so you get a big gap between games 2 and 3 each day.

[Gibraldo]

I would tend to go with what FIFA's documents are, but I know as for game times some match times listed might change to accomodate tv. What this means as they'd try and put Asian teams at 13:30p.m. and Western Hemisphere teams at 20:30p.m. To accomodate tv for these teams. I hope what I said there made sense. I found it hard to find the words to explain what I was saying here.

I think you are definitely right. it was so at WC 2006 either. Australia, Japan, Korea having the early games.

Therefore, the match schedule times on the fifa page are surely just provisorical.

Let`s take the first monday of the tournament. If E1 is Brasil and E2 is maybe the Netherlands, they would shift the match at Jo`burg to 20:30, swapping it with maybe F1-F2 (maybe Spain-Korea).

[scmcbride21]

I think you are definitely right. it was so at WC 2006 either. Australia, Japan, Korea having the early games.

Therefore, the match schedule times on the fifa page are surely just provisorical.

Let`s take the first monday of the tournament. If E1 is Brasil and E2 is maybe the Netherlands, they would shift the match at Jo`burg to 20:30, swapping it with maybe F1-F2 (maybe Spain-Korea).

I'm pretty sure Italy will be slotted in Group F. But aside from that they will never change venues of the matches and most likely when the draw comes out they will come up with the game times for the game of matches on that day already. For example if the 3 matches for a day are originally scheduled for....
Argentina v. Portugal 1:30p.m.
Ghana v. Australia 4p.m.
Saudi Arabia v. Russia 8:30p.m.
.......I'd imagine they would switch the game times to......
Ghana v. Australia 1:30p.m.
Saudi Arabia v. Russia 4p.m.
Argentina v. Portugal 8:30p.m
.........that way it accomodates tv in the countries of those matches. You'll see rare circumstances where and Asian team may be playing a night game but teams like Brazil, Argentina, and England will probably be in those spots more often than not.