UEFA Euro 2008 on ESPN/ABC

The first time WCVB put up the weather crawl I switched to WLNE out of Providence. Every so often having two local ABC channels pays off.

 

I thought it was cute and funny in a euro sense cause i was looking at the balloons and like WTF then they kinda explained what was going on with the pre game ceromony

 

I sent them an email about this just a while ago. Hope they get a bunch.

 

I couldn't believe they did cut off just before the trophy was handed to the Spaniards. All they had to do was wait three minutes.......

 

The final will be replayed at 2:30 am EDT Monday on ESPN2. Those of you whose ABC affiliates blew it can set your magic recording machines.

 

Our local ABC affiliate cut in with a weather update in the first half for about 10-15 minutes when it's 0-0. When it goes back to the game the score is 1-0. A buddy over here watching it with me sent them an e-mail telling how he felt about that. I'll just say it's R rated.

We weren't happy campers.

 

Actually, The Superbowl is really popular in the US, does well in Mexico and Canada. Otherwise, with generous numbers, i don't think the Superbowl gets no more than 300-400 million viewers worldwide. NFL always trys to inflate the numbers. I watch American football, but lets' be honest, outside the US, no one really cares about Superbowl. You can ask your friends that live overseas.

 

yeah in Europe the super bowl starts between 10 PM and 1 AM (depending on time zones) on a sunday night. It's on cable/satellite sports channels in most places, and even pay per view in many countries. The NFL reports potential viewers in the hundreds of millions, but outside of the US, Canada, and Mexico it's obscure and nobody cares.

 

Yeah? like your 3-year old brain getting washed?

Oh, so it's not wrong, but just stupid? thank god. So it's NOT a fact, but your pee brain's opinion that it's a world major event...

Wake up and smell the coffee. The biggest event, as far as audience is concerned, is India X Pakistan in cricket. World Cup final wouldn't even crack the top 10...

And I don't know how you get this "second one" nonsense. Even Yao Ming vs Yi Jianlian topped the 2004 Euro final's global audience...

 

No chance. My first response to forzalazio's stupid comment was

"Major world sports event? last time I check, USA, Brasil and Argentina aren't in it..."

Do you think this is a context of participation? or do you think this statement meant no one in USA/Brasil/Argentina watches the tournament?

Funny that I told you my criteria, a disjunction of two conditions. Knowing that you have absolutely no chance to win on the "participation" condition, now you have to argue on how I presented my criteria...

Fortunately, my first statement in this argument got me covered...

And your dishonesty are exposed by not telling the whole truth. Why did you deliberately skip my "USA, Brasil and Argentina are not in it"? Is this a deliberate attempt to mislead?

Yeah? and how is that wrong? If I define world as all countries in the world. You are the one who got the argument crushed, but that's not a wrong definition.

So? and that's still not a wrong definition. It's just that your camp of whiners are not agreeing with my definition, because that would totally crushed the Euro as a "world major sports event".

If nothing else, at least my definition is consistent with the definition of "world". Yours? Are all definitions in the world subject to the approval of "people arguing with me here"? Who do you think you are?

Worse yet, non-participation from some countries in the world does not make it a world tournament, let alone a world major tournament.

You finally see the lights...

Yeah? generally according to whom? are you trying to use BS members that argue with me as the judge? And where is the generally acceptable definition that the world consists of all countries minus the USA?

And have you supplied proof that your definition is uphead by the society at large to a good degree? Go ahead, cite it that society at large accepts that the world consists of all countries minus the USA...

I can't wait.

Left for you as an exercise, remember? you dodge your exercise...

 

<crickets chirping>
.
.
.
<chirp>
.
.
.
<chirp>

Hmm.......happy with yourself?

But you forgot your theme song...........:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=8o8VVczCOkI

 

Do you have a link?

As far as audience is concerned, the world cup final is the biggest event in the world. Even if all the TVs in India and Pakistan were tuned in to their cricket game, it wouldn't come close to the world cup final.

 

I wouldn't underestimate that cricket game. I don't know about your area but I know when its India v Pakistan Virginia Beach looks like a ghost town with everyone inside glued to the tv

 

Ummm... completely dodge the argument. Can't blame you for that. Arguing something silly like that in the U.S.A., against the American media, won't get you anywhere...

 

The 2006 final had a generous estimated audience of only about 400M, a reality check from the overblown figure of 715M that FIFA announced right after the World Cup.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...on-tv-viewers-was-a-quarter-right-438302.html

As far as Indian/Pakistan cricket is concerned, I've seen figures of much bigger:

"An India-Pakistan cricket match has been estimated to attract up to a billion television viewers"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_versus_Pakistan_cricket_rivalry

"Watched by an estimated global television audience of one billion and played in front of over 70,000 spectators at the Melbourne cricket ground, the tsunami charity match featuring most of the worlds top players raised more than millions of dollar for the victims of the tsunami disaster.."

http://cricket.deepthi.com/cricket-news-january-2005.html


"TELEVISION SCHEDULES: Who will show what?
Cricket Matches Live Telecast in UK Tests to be viewing phenomenon India's historic cricket tour of Pakistan, starting this week, will be a television phenomenon, particularly the one-day internationals, each of which is expected to be watched by a massive 600 million TV viewers on the subcontinent alone."

http://india-pakistan.cricket.deept...n-cricket-tour-live-on-tv-internet-radio.html

"Even bigger than Bollywood, televised cricket matches can capture 60 percent or more of the Indian viewing audience, some 450 million people."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/43341?tid=relatedcl

So, we all love football, but are you fumed that World Cup audience is still a far cry from cricket audience?

 

I don't want to get involved in this pissing match, but this is the exact wording used by the NFL to make the super bowl sound like a worldwide event too. That there is talking about potential audience, not actual audience.

 

And what a pssing match it's become,eh? No ranger dear, nobody's "fumed" at cricket's worldwide audience.
i came to a thread related to euro 2008 last week "fumed" at disney.corp's employees' la-di-da attitude about losing the feed at the climax to one of the most dramatic conclusions anyone with a heart and a brain could ask from a sporting event (turkey-germany), and yards of screed later what have we learned?

well, from the disneyists it seems that anything espn gives us is fine by us, because we're americans and we don't know too much, and if we complain we might hurt disney's feelings and make them go away, and then we'll all be back to watching univision or paying absurd ppv fees. because in america football is a zero-sum game, either disney has it or nobody will, and that seems to be the reason 1/2 the posters to bigamericasoccer are so ardently contemptuous of any critique of the way the sport is brought to us.
And anyone who would accuse disney of short-shrifting one of the world's major sporting events, well, that's idiotic because there really arent any, not here in "disjunction" land.

but attention mickey mousers: it appears that at least 1/2 the contributors to this particular thread recognize a problem. maybe not to the point of wanting to smash julie foudy's image through the tv screen like i did
for about 10 minutes there, but def not in any mood to lick the hand that's feeding us. so who's "fumed" now?

 

*sigh* rangers00 being rangers00 again. Sadly, even when he makes a good point like this one:

... he can't help but make himself look like an idiot, thanks to stupid argumentative posts like this one (which always inevitably follows soon after):

Did anyone even remember his one valid point before I just dug it up from the pile of crap which followed it?

 

The lost feed was experienced throughout the planet. It had nothing to do with ESPN. I'm in Croatia and experienced the same thing...

 

Sigh, BocaFan must have done something really stupid, and has to change his ID to NapoliSupporter. Are you ashamed of Boca Juniors now?

Well, ironically, it was early in this thread (8 months ago) that you came here and spouted idiocy about wanting to get this tournament on PPV:
https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?p=9982458#post9982458

#9:

"I just hope that ABC and ESPN don't end-up with the entire Euro 2008 package. Keep it on PPV (at least the majority of matches) and let us get proper coverage (read: British-feed) of this tournament."

https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?p=9984485#post9984485

#12:

"Don't let the existing football fans down, Setanta. Up your price if you have to. Real fans will have no issues with paying $200 to watch the most competitive international tournament in football."

#16:

"Well, that's just it. I don't believe that showing this tournament on ESPN/ABC will grow the sport in America. "

And worse yet, you supplied the arsenal to my claim that the Euro wasn't a world major sports event:

https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?p=9992384#post9992384

#33:

" Even in South America, very few people care about the Euros."

If that's pile of crap, then the pile of crap you posted last year are going to haunt you. It's not difficult to dig up. Changing your ID from Boca to Napoli isn't going to save you.

 

were you fumed at Setanta's treatment of the Euro in 2000 and 2004? Well, they allocated 2/2.5 hours at InDemand PPV (cable). You can imagine what happened when the game went into ET or shootout...

Yet did you complain? My guess is not because you probably got priced out of the games...

You sure complained, but you sure came out as a baseless whiner because

1) majority of the world experienced the same outage
2) you felt that the American media had the obligation to treat this as mainstream American event (SB, WS, Final 4, etc.) simply because you felt that this was a major world sports event. In other words, the interest of the ROW should dictate how Americans should do, albeit 99% of the Americans aren't interested.

Sure, at least paying absurd PPV fees, you probably would not have complained because you would get priced out, albeit Setanta would experience the same outage for sure ...

One of the world's major sporting events? according to whom? at least not according to disney. Look no further than whiner BocaFan (now wimped out as NapoliSupporter), who for 5 years continuously whined about ESPN's treatment of soccer:

"Even in South America, very few people care about the Euros."

So should Disney treat this as a world's major sporting event simply because you and 18 posters here think that this is a major sporting event? IOW, should ESPN tailor the Euro towards the 19 of you?

 

Not at all. NFL used the # of people who can access the game, i.e. the population that subscribe to a pay channel that carried the game (e.g. ESPN Asia, ESPN Middle East), not the # people who probably watch it, which is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percentage. Look no further than the advertisements during the SB on ESPN Asia, almost all were promotions of ESPN Asia's upcoming soccer telecasts.

A parallel would be accusing SB's ratings as "the 90M viewers American that watched the SB are only potential audience, not actual audience". Not so, if they used potential audience, the NFL would have used the entire TV population in America (i.e. 111M households, or somewhat between 150M to 200M viewers), because all households in America can access the game.

Same for cricket in India, since it's a major sport.

 

yea but India vs Pakistan is the muslims vs the hindi.......its not important like real christian sport.

 

Yes, it is, considering it is shown in over 80 countries in the world. Whether or not people watch it is up to them, but it is broadcast there. In the past maybe not, but the access to cable and internet increase popularity of basketball immensely. Same with the Euro, it may be between one continent, but it was broadcast to the entire world.

Next.

America is 1 of 206 countries in the world. This is the stupidest thing i have heard yet.

This is not the proper context. Something doesnt have to be a world event participation wise to be a considered a world event. The Super Bowl alone should tell you that. Plenty of people in the world dont give a rats ass who wins the SB, but a billion people watch it.

and this business about sending on-site commentators is rubbish. This is just to save money, why send 4 blokes there when you can do it from Bristol, CT at 1/4 the price.

This is an opinion, and a very poor one.

More silliness. One countries is funny by the way, but plurality is the least of your worries though. Cricket first of all, has a popular following, but no where near that of soccer. Plus, since its like watching flies f*ck, its hard to translate it to countries that dont understand it (i.e. USA for example). But people in every country can identify with the teams in soccer. Why do you think Man U plays games over the summer in Thailand? You are just assuming that since America doesnt follow the Euro that other non-euro countries follow suit. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Well then, i guess cycling in the olympics is not a world event, because Laos doesn't participate in cycling qualifiers. You can't just make up criteria, and considering your second criteria here is patently false you lose. Badly. Move along.