England’s exit from Euro 2008 will be nastiest for broadcasters, writes Peter Preston.
ITV has already reckoned up the damage to its own P&L: some £10m in lost ad revenue.
And the press? Always an acute watcher of ABCs, Preston notes that during the last European Championships, the Sun’s circulation fell by 4.8%. The Mirror fell by 5.9%.
“We had all the costs, all the extra pages, all the headlines,” writes Preston, “but not much you could call tangible reward.”
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Really? This seems to leave advertising out of the equation: retailers pushing plasma screens, the Guardian pushing Delia’s half-time recipes, and a myriad of sponsored supplements.
According to Claire Beale at the Indy, British advertisers laid out £300m to promote their wares in and around the World Cup in 2006. On that basis, surely the uplift for Euro 2008 would have reached £150m-£200m.
For the hell of it, let’s assume that £50m of that amount would have made its way into press advertising. At least a few million of that amount would have reached Carolyn McCall’s coffers in Farrington Road.
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I guess it takes a real trustafarian to be blasé about that kind of money.
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