Johannesburg - The world soccer body Fifa will earn about R25-billion on the television media rights to broadcast the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.
That was a massive increase from the R22-billion Fifa received for the past two World Cups combined, Fifa TV director Niclas Ericson told a media briefing in Johannesburg on Monday.
Fifa was also making the 2010 spectacle available to millions of fans via their cellphones worldwide.
Fifa would spend an estimated R1.5-billion on TV production for the world showpiece. However, Ericson said he was expecting a viewership of just over 26 billion worldwide for the duration of the month-long tournament, the same number that watched the 2006 event in Germany.
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Said Ericson: "It is difficult to estimate the viewership expected. Had a country like China with 1.3 billion people qualified for the World Cup, then viewership would have soared.
"But although we are not quite at saturation point, it is difficult to estimate how many viewers we will have even in Africa. It depends on how well African teams fare in the World Cup, but we expect it will be roughly the same as in 2006."
Ericson said Fifa would give Africa a better deal for the 2010 finals. "We have entered an agreement with the African Union of Broadcasters to place the TV rights in 41 sub-Saharan countries before the end of 2009. The dream would be for an African team top reach the final, which would boost TV viewership.
"We expect Africa to support whichever country from the continent goes the farthest in the World Cup, but we want to make sure the event is available to as many Africans as possible as this is an African event."
Fifa would now do the broadcast in-house with HBS as the host broadcaster and the SABC as the official broadcaster. The CEO of HBS Francis Tellier, also announced that all World Cup matches would be available on cellphones worldwide.
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