Old fogey mediums like newspapers and TV did well financially from the 2006 World Cup, although TV audiences in Europe were down slightly from the 1998 Cup, which was played in the same time zone.

From the NYT article:

Kevin Alavy, an analyst in London for the media buying agency Initiative, said that through the semifinals, television audiences in 49 of the largest markets rose an average of 15 percent from the last World Cup in 2002. One reason for the increase was a more favorable time zone for viewers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas: the 2002 Cup was played in South Korea and Japan.

Compared with the 1998 World Cup in France, which was played in the same time zone as this year's tournament, average audiences were down by 3 percent to 5 percent, Mr. Alavy said. Still, given that the number of television channels available to many households in Europe has proliferated in the last eight years, "the World Cup has done better than a lot of other programming in dealing with fragmentation," he said.

Old media's successes were not limited to television. According to La Tribune, a French business newspaper, the sports daily L'Équipe sold 900,000 copies the day after France's quarterfinal victory over Brazil, nearly three times its daily average.

While most people still watch soccer on television, in their living room or in a pub, the 2006 tournament was the first World Cup in which some realistic alternatives emerged. In several countries, live video was available on the Internet. Elsewhere, games or highlights could be watched on mobile phones.

Though reports on the use of new media have been sketchy, it appears that it played a mostly supplementary role, allowing financial traders to keep one eye on their team while monitoring stock prices with the other, for instance.

Mobile television gained some traction in Australia, where match times were unfavorable for conventional viewing. Amanda Hutton, head of music and mobile TV at Hutchison 3, a cellular operator in Australia, said customers connected to mobile highlights or full-match broadcasts about 300,000 times in the first two weeks of the World Cup, before Australia was eliminated.

"Perhaps our customers were just too lazy to get out of bed," she said.