MUMBAI: At the recently concluded sports television market Sportel Asia 2006 in China, Mediametrie’s International director, Jacques Braun, noted that “year 2005 was a good year for TV consumption throughout the world, despite the lack of worldwide sports events”.

He stressed the fact that 2006 is the year of the Soccer World Cup in Germany starting in June in Munich. This is a worldwide event, but if Europe prefers soccer, the Winter Sports like Alpine skiing and ice hockey are still the preference of more than 7 countries.

Asia is still a very specific market. China’s best sports TV audience of 2005 was the opening ceremony of the National games with more than 54 billion viewers, and India preferred cricket to soccer just like their neighbour Pakistan.

In 2005, the Brazil FI grand prix won a large audience in Germany with 7.3 billion viewers who followed this GP on RTL and also with 6.2 billion viewers on Rai 1. In China, the Monaco grand prix realized an audience of more than 5.4 billions viewers.

Braun says, “Once more, TV audiences are even better when the events are local or broadcast in prime time”.

The winter Olympic Games of Torino saw the men’s free skating competition meet with great audience success in the USA (their national competitors finished 3rd and 5th) with more than 19 billion viewers (delayed broadcast in prime time), and also in Switzerland (TSR2 realized a market share of 37,2%) and France where more than 6 billion viewers (average audience on France 2) were waiting for the French competitor.

Eurodata TV Worldwide will publish its report One TV Sport Year in the World – 2006 issue by mid april 2006 and offers studies about all the big events with the sport event reports about the Torino OG or the next Soccer World Cup.