by We’ve entered an era where World Cup competitions feel like the equivalent of a four-hour director’s cut: brilliant but flawed, with too many throwaway scenes before the thrilling denouement. The men’s Cricket World Cup took 38 days and 45 matches to whittle down 10 teams to four semi-finals – which, amazingly, was 10 days longer than the entire 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Meanwhile it took a month and 40 games to whittle down 20 countries to eight. And yet we still see nothing.
In 2027, cricket and rugby union will have four more teams and even more games. The 2026 World Cup in football in the USA, Canada and Mexico is going Super Size Me: from 32 teams to 48, and 64 games to 104. Academics have an umbrella term for a competition that is so big that the millions around the globe focusing on them: mega sports. -events. Think of the World Cup. Think of the Olympics. Think big, big, big. But is big always better?
Related: Transgender players banned from women’s international cricket by ICC
The Guardian spoke to more than a dozen experts in sports leadership, broadcasting, marketing and academia to find out. Along the way we also asked why, at a time when we are constantly being told that audience attention spans are shrinking, are we experiencing a boom in sports? And is there even a risk that some sports will kill the golden goose?
The obvious question – “why are sports doing this?” – he also has a clear answer: cash and the chance to make a lot more of it. “The number one KPI [key performance indicator] for the men in charge of the sport is to generate more money,” says sports marketing expert Tim Crow, who started his career with the Test and County Cricket Board, now the England and Wales Cricket Board, and was in his main mind behind it. Marketing the Olympic games in London 2012. “It’s as simple as that. And the more inventory you bring to TV, the better your deal will be.”
Of course it’s the economy, stupid. FIFA achieved total revenue of $7.5bn during the 2019 to 2022 World Cup cycle, the most profitable in its history, with $6bn generated from the tournament in Qatar alone. He knows he has a captive audience. So why not offer more games, and accrue the benefits?
The sport also has a huge advantage in that its TV audience is extremely sticky. In the US, for example, 94 of the top 100 TV ratings in 2022 were sports. In the UK, England’s World Cup quarter-final against France was last year’s most watched show with 16.1 million viewers, ahead of the Queen’s state funeral, the platinum jubilee and I’m a Celebrity … Find Out Here !
Especially in a world where there is so much competition for eyeballs – from streaming services, YouTube, TikTok and more – and much less TV shows that we all tune into, sport offers that rare thing: cultural touchstones and community experiences.
As Charles Beall, vice president of digital strategy at global giant IMG, says: “The power of sport in this ever-growing battle for attention is never-ending. And great live sport will always benefit, add value to audiences and platforms, and attract and retain audiences.”
Many sports also like to talk about “growing the game”, allowing them to expand the World Cup. But sometimes a defensive measure may be involved. Most audiences are now “big events”. We don’t have time to follow the cough and spit of every sport. The World Cup acts as a shop window and a short story to say that an event is important – so why not go further?
But not everyone thinks this latest trend is a good thing. A very senior gardaí person said he feared some sports were in danger of being “overkill” and “going off a cliff” with too many meaningless games distracting players and leaving fans bored. “The next time you see Gianni Infantino, ask him: ‘When do you think FIFA can reach 206 teams for the World Cup,'” he said. “It has been reduced to ad absurdum.”
You can see his point. Sport is thought to be about unpredictability and danger. But there were very few of either in the recent qualifiers for Euro 2024 in Germany. And while the men’s Cricket World Cup has produced some impressive upsets – Afghanistan beating England and the Netherlands topping South Africa – its long group stage has significantly lowered the value of such victories, and it hasn’t helped the alarming lack of close games either.
Has the lack of excitement affected TV viewers? Maybe. It is understood that Sky’s viewing figures did not do as well as expected, but internally that has been put down to England’s poor campaign.
However, Ed Warner, former chairman of UK Athletics, says India’s lack of a full stadium should be a wider warning. “When I was with UKA, the BBC always told us that it was vital to sell out our events,” says Warner. “They said people will leave if they see empty stadiums. If no one cares enough to go, why should the audience bother?
There were no such issues with the Rugby World Cup, which was played to sell-out crowds. But while his knockout ranks were outstanding, the group ranks were anything but. Only eight of 40 games ended with a score of seven points or less between the teams, and the average margin of victory over the pool stages was almost 32 points. Of the eight quarter finals, only Fiji was a surprise.
Does the lack of competitive balance concern fans? Not surprising, according to Dr Robbie Butler, an economist at University College, Cork. “There’s a large body of literature that finds supporters, across different sports, who don’t care if the competitions are fair,” he says. “In recent years this has been seen in sports such as Formula One, tennis, golf and boxing. Our recent work on F1 – a sport dominated by two teams since 2010 – found that US fans were less motivated to watch because of increased competition and were happy to see a dominant victory by Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen.”
Another leading economist, David Forrest of the University of Liverpool, has written persuasively and extensively about the uncertainty of star power trumping television viewership. However Crow, who now sits on the International Olympic Committee’s esports commission, says sports would be wrong to assume young fans don’t care about danger.
“Danger is very attractive to young people,” he says. “In sports, when it’s going to be a game with two top teams against each other, you see the difference in terms of eyeballs. And pay-per-view boxing and combat sports are very popular with young people. They are disproportionately attracted to it because of the danger.”
So what happens next? According to Crow, the growth of major sporting events is likely to lead to further overcrowding. “I think we’re going to see a lot of sports that are pretty big now struggle,” he says. “And in some cases they probably go off the top league map.”
Crow refuses to say which sports he’s talking about, because it might upset people he works with. “But it doesn’t take much to work out who they are when you look up their revenue graph, profit graph, and fan bases.”
Meanwhile Beall, who is an expert on changing audience trends, says people are wrong to say younger sports have limited attention spans. Rather, with phones and the internet so readily available, they have endless possibilities in pursuit of their eyes. “The audience will not accept being bored,” he says. “They can transfer much more easily and this is the reason for the shortening of sports formats.”
Beall expects this to continue – and says sports will need to change the way they market and sell their sport to keep up. “Now, any small slot of time can be a moment of entertainment: when you’re waiting in a queue or on that otherwise empty journey, wasted time,” he says, pointing to the success TikTok is unique in offering short-form content. . “Sports must continue to innovate across everything from competition format, to production elements such as vertical feeds, multi-screen content, custom localization, in-stadium technology and data, and more interaction with influencers – a prime example is Peyton and Eli Manning’s Manningcast.”
But, like many of the other people the Guardian spoke to, Beall also recognizes the value of sports that have stood the test of time. “All sports need to be aware of supersaturation,” he says. “The Ryder Cup, the Olympics and Rugby Lions all derive their ‘special’ status precisely because they have a rare value that attracts significant fan interest at key moments.”
In other words, feed the golden goose – but don’t risk killing it.
