Esporte na America Latina

LATIN AMERICANS ARE BECOMING MULTI-SPORT LOVERS
Broadcasting of sports events through specialized cable TV channels has significantly increased the audience interested in following not just one but many sports in Latin America.
Perfil conducted a survey (1 ) among sports fans (watchers of sports programs on TV for over 5 hours a week) in more than 30 Latin American cities in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela , Panama, Dominican Republic and México. Findings showed some remarkable results, among them:
The population under study watches more sports channels than any other kind of channels , even when they are considered as a whole (news, movies, music and so on).
Soccer is, no doubt, the undisputed king, but 75% of these fans are strongly interested in other sports , such as car racing, basketball, baseball, tennis and extreme sports.
Base: Total fans of sports cable TV
Interest in soccer is indeed widespread: It is the most watched sport by over 90% of sports fans in Argentina , Brazil , Chile , Colombia , Panama and Mexico . Although this may not be surprising, the growing interest in soccer played beyond the local boundaries is indeed surprising: European soccer, for instance, is watched and followed by almost 60% of TV sports fans throughout the region.
Car racing is especially popular in Brazil , Venezuela and Colombia, but gets virtually 30% of the audience in the rest of the region.
Interest in basketball is particularly high in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, but captures more than one fourth of the audience in Panama, Mexico and Argentina.
Baseball appeal peaks in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Panama, but it also gets a high audience in Colombia and México, and seems to attract more and more followers in the area.
Tennis , on the other hand, stands out in Chile and Argentina.
Multi-sport interest also includes other events, such as boxing, billiards, American football, karate, poker, rugby and golf.
It is evident that the development of communications has caused significant changes in Latin American TV sports fans' preferences. Not only is the TV sports fans trend increasing, but those fans' interests are becoming more diversified and universal.
(1) The 3,800-interview survey was conducted by Perfil Latam Research for ESPN during April and May 2007 in the aforementioned countries . Artigo revista Perfil, 2007.