ABSTRACT
Major sports events today are geared to the television audience. Those sports events that qualify as mega sports events rake in huge numbers of television spectators. For example, the 2012 edition of American football’s Super Bowl (Super Bowl XLVI) attracted 111.3 million viewers above the age of two for that one game (Cutler, 2012b). While that was a record for the Super Bowl, it pales in comparison to the 700 million television spectators for the final of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, which saw Spain win 1-0 over the Netherlands. While huge, this number in turn pales in comparison to the opening ceremonies of the summer edition of an Olympic Games which can attract over 1.4 billion television spectators worldwide (Miah, 2010). The 2010 Olympic Winter Games attracted approximately 3.8 billion television spectators worldwide during its 17 days (International Olympic Committee, 2010b), whereas the 2010 FIFA World Cup attracted approximately 24 billion television spectators worldwide during the month-long event. For these events to be broadcast to a worldwide audience, the organizing committee must host the world’s media. In 2010 the International Sports Press Association voted the 2010 World Cup (South Africa) as the best press facilities of the year, with the 2010 Olympic Winter Games (Canada) and Wimbledon (Great Britain) coming in second and third, respectively (FIFA.com, 2011).
