World Cup 2010: The people’s game?

Just when I thought that the commercialisation of football and the disregard for its fans couldn’t get any worse, the unimaginable happened: Football’s “main event”, the World Cup that FIFA has branded the “people’s game”, is no longer available to all. In Denmark where I live, 21 of the games played at the 2010 the World Cup can only be seen on an obscure commercial channel called Canal 9 that was launched as recently as 2009 . This channel initially had TV-ratings so low that they couldn’t be measured, and only a fourth of the population can see it today. Football fans elsewhere find themselves in the same pickle as in Denmark: Brazilians will have to have access to five channels to be able to see all matches, including three commercial channels;   and Argentinians, Chileans, the Chinese, Colombians, the Japanese, Norwegians, the Portuguese, the Spanish and the Americans will all need to have access to at least one commercial channel to be able to see all the games of  the 2010 World Cup.