TheEconomistOctober 5th 2019 531T
he earlystages of this year’s rugby
World Cup provided one of the greatest
upsets in the event’s 32-year history. On
September 28th, in the sweltering heat of
the Shizuoka Stadium, the hosts, Japan,
beat Ireland, then the second-best team in
the world, for the first time ever. The result
sparked raucous celebrations around the
country. Japanese tvpresenters bowed in
front of images of the victors before read-
ing the news. The commissioner of the Ja-
pan Sports Agency boasted that his country
had rewritten sporting history.
The sport’s bosses are hoping that such
standout events will attract more than its
usual followers. Rugby and other games
are increasingly concerned about their
commercial future. Technology allows
fans to watch any game at any time from
anywhere. That, combined with a growing
world population, means that in terms of
sheer numbers, sports audiences are big-
ger than ever. But growth in revenues has
slowed, according to pwc, a consultancy.
Attention spans are shrinking. The “sticki-
ness” of viewers—the number of minutes
of a game that they watch—is dwindling,
says Kevin Alavy, the head of Futures Sport,
another consultancy. An annual decline of
3% in the number of minutes watched per
game per sport per year is common. Sports
that drag on for hours, if not days, such as
cricket, are particularly vulnerable, as
viewers impatiently resort to alternative
entertainment on their smartphones—in-
cluding clips of the highlights. Cricket sells
the rights to show such clips separately
from those to screen whole matches.
This pressure is leading to increasingly
intense competition between sports for
fans’ money and attention. The stakes are
high. Sport is a serious business, generat-
ing around $90bn a year, reckons Victor
Matheson, a sport economist at the College
of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
In America major sports are still ex-
tremely valuable to advertisers and pay-tv
providers because almost every other type
of entertainment offered on television has
suffered far worse declines in viewership.
MoffettNathanson, a research firm, found
in a recent survey of 5,000 Americans thathalf watched sports at least once a month,
and that of those, 90% still subscribe to
pay-tv. Only 67% of the respondents who
do not watch sports have pay-tv. So while
Netflix has eroded pay-tvviewership, the
live sporting match remains a draw that is
less replaceable—except by other live
sporting matches.
Football remains indisputably the
world’s favourite sport. It generates rev-
enues of around $40bn a year, says Mr
Matheson, almost twice as much as the
next most lucrative sport, American foot-
ball, five times as much as basketball and
20 times as much as cricket (see chart over-
leaf ). Its overall market share has grown
since 2000, according to Futures Sport. It is
simple to play and easy for fans around the
world to follow. fifa, the sport’s governing
body, has invested huge sums of money in
emerging markets. The women’s game has
galvanised the sport still further; this year’s
women’s World Cup was watched by more
than a billion viewers. And football’s popu-
larity has soared in China and America, es-
pecially among young people.
No sport will dislodge football. But oth-
ers can learn from its success. Three big les-
sons have become apparent. Sports need to
adapt to modern viewing habits. They need
to break into new markets. Doing so in-
volves more than simply staging matches
in new countries—it means finding home-
grown stars from these markets.
No game has reinvented itself for a
time-poor age as successfully as cricket. InGlobal sports
Ahead of the game
In the increasingly tough global contest between sports for money and attention,
basketball is scoring points
International