Footballer Marcel Desailly: TV viewers would rather watch Olympics than World Cup

Footballer Marcel Desailly spoke at the Cannes Lions today

French World Cup winning footballer Marcel Desailly said today that the Olympics has the edge over the FIFA World Cup in media value because of the latter’s diversity of sports and core brand value of “respect”.

Speaking at a Cannes Lions session hosted by Visa in the South of France, the former Chelsea defender said that while “80 per cent” of people prefer football to the Olympics Games, if both sports were on TV at the same time, most would choose to watch the Olympics.

“I think that 80 per cent of people prefer football [to the Olympics]. But if you put the World Cup and the Olympics on at the same time, more people will watch the Olympics because of the diversity of sports and the respect that the Games stands for.”