Major events

By  Nick Harris 30 June 2010 With all the ratings data now available from the USA’s weekend defeat to Ghana, it has been confirmed that the match was the most-watched football game in American TV history. It drew an average audience of 19.4m, with almost 15m watching on ABC (a figure known soon afterwards), plus […]

By Gary Hopkins 26 June 2010 A historic day in American soccer lies ahead today with the possibility that long-standing TV viewing records for the sport in the USA will tumble. When the USA play Ghana today at 2.30pm Eastern Time on a Saturday afternoon (7.30m in the UK and 8.30pm is South Africa), and […]

By Nick Harris 21 June 2010 The match between Uruguay and Mexico in Group A at the World Cup in South Africa on Tuesday will be a draw according to the global betting markets, which have seen an unprecedented amount of cash laid on that outcome. There is no suggestion of a fixed result between […]

By Nick Harris 17 June 2010 Record TV ratings in some key markets suggest the 2010 World Cup is on course to be a contender as the most-watched single-sport event in history. For that, much will depend on the numbers in the most populous nations, including China (not represented but tuning in) Brazil and the […]

By Brian Sears 17 June 2010 England are the only country ranked inside the top eight nations in the world who perform worse at football than national income levels suggest they should, according to sportingintelligence analysis. Last week, we considered how countries fared in footballing terms in relation to the population resources at their disposal. […]

By Nick Harris 16 June 2010 When Germany won the Eurovision song contest last month, it was billed back home as the ‘Miracle of Germany’ because it was so unexpected. The triumph for their 19-year-old songstress, Lena Meyer-Landrut, with ‘Satellite’, was the first time in 13 years that one of the “big four” in the […]

By Nick Harris 15 June 2010 Adidas’s controversial World Cup football, the Jabulani, wasn’t simply offered to competing nations for use months ago, but was rejected in some cases – including by England – because of commercial considerations to other firms, namely Umbro in England’s case. England’s squad would only have been able to use […]

By Nick Harris 14 June 2010 North Korea will have fewer fans at the 2010 World Cup than any other nation because ordinary citizens are forbidden to travel and because, according to Amnesty International, expats who gather in public places risk doing so in fear of their lives and in fear of reprisals against family […]

By Brian Sears 11 June 2010 Football is a global game, arguably the only one, but of course there are some areas of the world that love it and embrace it more than others. If that weren’t the case, and nations loved the beautiful game in equal measure and played it in equal measure, then […]

11 June 2010 Can you identify the sporting arena? We take an aerial view of a topical ball park, football stadium, marathon course, golf course, Games venue, race track, iconic arena, athletic theatre (some literally theatres), pitch, park, stretch of water or wherever else sport takes place. And we ask you to identify it with the […]