I must admit that I am astonished to see this report in Rediff.com titled, 'Forget cricket, soccer's new media favourite'. What is shocking is that during World Cup 2006, football received 3 times more column centimeter (ccm) of editorial space than cricket in India. In case if you have forgotten, India played against West Indies during this time and had a historic test series win outside of India. I am quoting from this report:
"Football received three times higher editorial coverage than cricket across six major cities -- Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai -- in the run-up to the event. In terms of column centimeter (ccm) of editorial space generated, this would be 1,85,000 for soccer as against 57,000 for cricket."
Naturally, media is giving so much coverage for football only because the popular demand. I must admit that before the beginning of the world cup, I was skeptic about the appeal of world cup in South Asia, especially in India. I feel happy to admit that I am wrong as I underestimated the power of World Cup Football. Well, if you are still skeptic about it then I would like to direct you to a report published in the official website of World Cup Football. 'India falls in love with football'- this is the title of the report and Stephen Constantine, former coach of India and Nepal talks about the new found popularity of football in India.
It is nice to see that football is becoming very popular in India but it still falls well short of the popularity of cricket. However, I feel that World Cup 2006 is perhaps the turning point for football in India. FIFA should come forward to help Indian football organizers and players to make football more attractive and popular in India. India and USA are the last frontiers to be conquered by FIFA. I would not say that India has been conquered yet but this is a great turning point for football in India. Now, it is high time, FIFA tries the same for USA. I feel optimistic about USA too, as this time, I found that some of the big names in US media added blogs in their website. So, may be in USA, football will become popular through blogging. FIFA should spend all its effort to covert these two big countries to football as these two countries posses huge market potential.
» One in a Billion World Cup from Know More Media
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Tracked on: July 11, 2006 2:19 PM | Permalink to Trackback