Despite the controversy and uncertainty surrounding the 2014 World Cup, ESPN believes that this year's edition in Brazil will be more successful compared to the 2010 edition in South Africa.
Ed Erhardt, ESPN's president of global customer marketing and sales, said that they are expecting "significantly greater" ad sales this year compared to the numbers they posted in 2010.
Erhardt added that the 2014 World Cup Brazil is already writing strong business, saying that the demand is surprising at this point considering the protest and violence in Brazil.
According to Erhardt, the current strong pace could be attributed to the growing interest in the United States brought by the fact that more networks are showing Major League Soccer matches along with Premier League and Champions League games.
"For a long time, a large swath of the advertising industry thought of the World Cup as something that had a highly involved Hispanic viewership -- and a somewhat secondary non-Hispanic viewership in this country," Erhardt said, via Ad Age. "But it now has a very, very strong following for sports fans, regardless of whether they're Hispanic."
Erhardt revealed that telecom companies, movie studios, beer brands, and technology companies have been purchasing ad times over the past few month, while also pointing out that upcoming World Cup will also be a strong digital marketplace.
"When you think about it, if you're going to spend some money digitally, what will be the biggest event in all of the world that is digital? It will be the World Cup," Erhardt said. "While there was digital advertising [in 2010], it wasn't to the degree of the quality of the video that we now have -- or, frankly, the reach and scale that we now have."
The upcoming World Cup in Brazil is also tipped to become the most social event in sporting history, eclipsing the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, 2012 London Summer Olympics, and the 2010 World Cup.
