“Unsurprisingly, the most-watched match was the final Italy v France with a global cumulative audience of 715.1 million viewers.”

Here is a small link:
fifa

While in fact the olympic summergames reach more people in total, I guess, they don’t produce such a peak like a soccer final.

Most money is made by selling the tv-rights years before the event, and bundled for many, if not all games for different countries.

Since gnus and penguins aren’t allowed to qualify for this sportevents, we should, perhaps, focus on quality, not quantity.

But then again if you want sports events to really be on the list of entertainment then you probably should consider the Olympics Games and the Football World Cup to be the big events making several billion dollars in revenues around the world allthough the US TV rights sales to the olympics already are bigger than an entire superbowl edition

They’ve had a terrible month. Halo3 is, well, just a bone. They’ll need a few more thrown their way if the current seance (Microsoft-wide blog silence) doesn’t yield a big bright idea to get straight and still survive the advent of Free Software.

Direct revenue is zero, of course; what do you expect if you make something available with a price of $0 ?

But it does have the Superbrand name.

Is the whole Internet singing in tune yet ?

A good explanation of official matters:
http://dr_saaron.blogspot.com/2007/06/quote-of-day-2007-06-15.html

In any case, the different pricing models make comparisons across different media types very difficult. For example, a ticket to a film costs $10 or so while a video game costs $50 or so. But a movie studio will make a significant portion of their revenue from later pay-per-view and DVD sales and foreign distribution rights. Also, movies tend to open on a Thursday or Friday — a work day — so first day numbers are not that interesting. The industry tracks opening weekend sales as their primary metric.

For a novel, there is the eventual paperback version, translations, and the inevitable movie.

The prospect of these future revenue streams determines the pricing model. If films had only theatrical releases and no further possibilities for revenue, then tickets would cost you $50 or more.

But what does a video game have to look forward to? After the initial pop, sales diminish. Eventually a secondary market opens up and those who did not buy initially end up getting a second-hand copy. Entirely different models.

Because the per-unit pricing models are taking into account the different revenue stream prospects for different media, I’d look more towards counting unit sales when comparing one media to another. That is the more fair comparison.

So for Halo 3, I’m hearing 2.45 million units sold in the first 24 hours, including pre-sales. The latest Harry Potter sold 8.3 million in the first 24 hours,including pre-sales. Spiderman 3 had around $150 million in receipts the first weekend, so let’s say that is around 15 million tickets sold. But Super Bowl XLI, drew 93 million viewers, and this is only the 3rd most watched Super Bowl.

So by this metric, arguably a fairer metric, Halo 3 comes out well behind what people are comparing it to.

Yes, the whole launch sales has been overhyped to death. Most importantly, the sales models for games cannot be compared with films or television, because of the difference in revenue streams. The closest comparison is with books or DVD sales, which are single-purchase, multiple use products just like video games.

However I must remind people that we live in a world which still often characterises video games as being ‘for kids’ or ‘less serious’ than cinema. Yet the majority of gamers are in fact aged over 30, and hold down jobs. Whilst overhypeing a launch is clearly wrong, the launch of Halo 3 does send a message that computer and video games are a serious business and revenue stream.

I wonder if the refund check for the defective Limited editions will reach $58 million?

Well, at any rate, according to some fans, whatever is good about this is a credit to Bungee, not the distributor: http://www.johndavidhead.com/jhead/johnhead.nsf/dx/halo-3-arrives-…-master-chief-is-ready-to-take-over-the-world?opendocument&comments#anc1

Wasn’t the pre-order price close to $20?

In addition Microsoft Vista launch included advanced sales, and changing their revenue recognition model at the same time. The sales tactic is called ‘stuffing the channel’. Bet that’s happened here too.