Sports
2010 W/Cup: Fans Turn To Cellphones To Track Games
The billions of fans of soccer’s World Cup, globally the premiere sporting event, will increasingly turn to mobile phones to track the action, according to a Nielsen survey released over the weekend.
More than half of the 27,000 people surveyed in 55 countries plan to follow the popular soccer tournament which is played every four years and begins in South Africa on June 11, Nielsen said in a survey.
Twenty-one percent said they would get information about the tournament on their mobile device and 9 percent would download an application to track the action.
“This event is the biggest in the world of sports by far,” Roger Entner, Nielsen’s senior vice president for mobile insights, said
in a telephone interview.
“In 2010, mobile is really starting to be a medium for soccer fans worldwide to connect with the game.”
The popular FIFA soccer tournament drew more than 700 million TV viewers when it was last played in 2006, including more than 120 million U.S. viewers who watched at least one minute of World Cup telecasts, Nielsen said.
While this is the first such Nielsen survey, Entner said the numbers using cellphones to follow the event will be far higher than 2006.
“The last World Cup, there was no iPhone,” he said of Apple Inc’s <AAPL.O> popular smartphone introduced in 2007.
U.S. smartphone penetration has surged to 22 percent from 3.8 percent four years ago, he said.
In France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK the rate has grown to a range of 21 percent to 36 percent from 4 percent to 10 percent in 2006.
With more powerful, faster devices and networks, those growth trends will only continue with widespread mobile video and TV
being the next step, Entner said.
Of those surveyed, 51 percent said they intend to follow the tournament, including 84 percent in Brazil, 83 percent in Argentina, 76 percent in South Korea, 75 percent in Italy and Portugal, 69 percent in Zambia and almost two-thirds of the people in China, Nielsen said.
“It’s mind blowing. It really shows how it is a global phenomenon,” Entner said.
“We see some of the highest intended usage rates actually coming out of the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific Rim.”
Countries with high planned cellphone use to access World Cup information include Venezuela (27 percent), United States (23 percent) and Brazil (21 percent), Nielsen said.
In fact, in every country in the Middle East and Africa where people were surveyed, the rate was between 22 percent and 30 percent.
“People intend to use mobile to supplement their hunger for information about the game,” Entner said. “If you can’t watch the game live, you’re going to follow it through your mobile device.”
The rates in Europe were far lower — 3 percent in soccer powers Germany and Spain — which Entner thought made sense given most of those countries were in the same time zone as the World Cup and had a higher penetration of TV sets, meaning fans could watch the game live more easily.
Finally, 34 percent of those surveyed picked Brazil as the likely Cup winner, easily outdistancing Argentina, England and Germany.
Entner is rooting for his native Germany but has picked Brazil.
Sports
CAA Wants Ghana To Host 2026 Athletics Champions
The Confederation of African Athletics has invited Ghana to bid for the hosting rights of the 2026 African Athletics Championships, following a successful athletics event at the just concluded 2023 African Games.
President of Ghana Athletics, Bawa Fuseini, stated this and expressed confidence in the transformative potential of the Legon Stadium for athletes and Ghana’s bid to host international competitions.
With a capacity of 11,000, the Legon Stadium played a pivotal role in the recent African Games, hosting both the opening and closing ceremonies as well as various sporting events including athletics, football, and rugby.
Fuseini highlighted the success of the athletics events held at the stadium, which contributed to Ghana winning six medals.
“We have already started getting requests from the Confederation of African Athletics to bid for the 2026 African Athletics Championships.
“When they came and saw what we have put in place and the level of organisation, they told me that for the last 20 years, they’ve never seen any organisation like this before. We did three official courses. And the last one, we had 110, all of them passed. We had a lot of officials and equipment.”
Since its establishment in 1979, Ghana has never hosted the African Athletics Championships, with Nigeria being the host country twice, in 1989 and 2018.
This year, Cameroon will take the reins as the host nation, with the event set to be held at the Olembe Stadium.
Sports
Onigbinde Not Sacked – Chairman
Chairman of Doma United, Suleiman Umar, has said head, coach Akinade Onigbinde was not relieved of his duties after the club announced former Kwara United, Niger Tornadoes and Katsina United coach, Abubakar Bala, as an addition to their technical crew.
Bala was announced as the technical adviser by the club on Wednesday.
According to the club, Bala’s appointment was necessitated by the dwindling fortunes of the team in the second stanza of the Nigeria Premier Football League, which has seen them drop to 13th in the table with 34 points after 27 matches.
“The appointment of Coach Bala is imperative given our recent challenges in the second half of the season. We believe his extensive experience in managing teams within the league will significantly contribute to our objective of maintaining our status,” Umar said in a statement.
“It’s worth noting that coach Bala will be collaborating closely with Coach Onigbinde and our dedicated coaching staff. The technical department is not open to all, and we caution against unwarranted meddling as we remain focused on our objectives.”
The Savannah Tigers are winless in eight matches since the start of the second stanza with their last win in the league being their 2-0 win over Katsina United in January.
Their performance is a stark contrast to the first half of the campaign, when they ranked in the top three.
With 11 matches to the end of the season, Bala and Onigbinde must find a way to rescue the club as they sit just three points above the relegation zone.
Sports
‘I’m Not Under Pressure To Coach Eagles’
Finidi George, head coach of the Nigeria Premier Football Leagues side, Enyimba, has stated that he is not losing any sleep over getting the Super Eagles job on a permanent basis.
Early this month, the Nigeria Football Federation declared the position of the Super Eagles’ head coach vacant, following the exit of Portuguese Jose Peseiro, who led the side to a second-place finish at the 2023 Africa Cup Nations in Ivory Coast in February.
In an advertisement on its website calling for applications with a March 13 deadline, the football governing body stated that the prospective Eagles coach “must have proven experience at the elite level of football.”
The former Ajax man, who also applied for the job, was appointed Eagles interim coach for the international window with the former winger picking a win and suffering a defeat.
In an interview with Tidesports source, the 52-year-old tactician said he was not desperate for the job permanently.
“I felt really good when I was told to take charge of the team. I have been with the team for almost two years, I know all the players, their strengths, and their weaknesses but I am only here to serve Nigeria the way I know how to do stuff.
“I will just take these two games and go back to my club. Whatever the decision is taken after, so be it. I’m not under pressure to say I must get the role permanently.”
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