The drive from Jakarta to Sentul was taking longer than usual that Friday evening in July this year, no thanks to the traffic escaping Indonesian the capital. Contrarily, time seemed to fly as our cab driver engaged us in a gripping conversation about the ensuing English Premier League football season. EPL teams like Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers had all swung through the region and the cab driver waxed eloquent about these teams and their players with ease and the devotion of a passionate follower.
There cannot be a better example of how the evolution of media technology had brought English football – and many other world class sports events – home to millions of fans in Asia. The synergy and inter-dependence between broadcast media and sport, especially at the international level, has completely altered how we consume what has come to be called sports products from across the globe. All of us love watching a spectacle, irrespective of whether our athletes take part in it or not. And sport does provides great content for TV and earns stupendous revenue from the sale of rights.
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