Simon Clegg: 32,100 spectators attended 19 sessions yesterday

Baku, June 18, AZERTAC "Some 32,100 spectators attended 19 sessions at 10 different venues, with an average attendance rate of 87 per cent. We had our largest day of spectators yesterday since the opening ceremony. Yesterday was a packed day of competition with 13 sports staging competition events," Chief Operating Officer of Baku European Games Operations Committee (BEGOC) Simon Clegg has told in a press conference. He highlighted the preparations at the Olympic Stadium for athletics on 21 and 22 June: "The transition from the opening ceremony to track and field athletics out at the Baku Olympic Stadium is going extremely well. Last night around midnight the track cleaning contractor arrived to start work in preparation for competition this weekend. The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle, the grass to go on the infield of the track, arrived and has been laid." "Last night we had 4,553 occupants in the Athletes Village, both athletes and officials. We've had 71 European Games champions crowned to date," he added. Mr Clegg touched upon selling broadcasting and advertising rights for the Baku 2015 European Games: "Broadcasting is one of the great success stories of this Games. We have gone to the commercial marketplace both for sponsorship and for broadcasting with nothing more than a blank piece of paper and a bunch of promises. But people have believed in us, believed in this project and they have invested their money in ensuring that their brands can be associated with the Games and for the broadcasters that they have the opportunity of showcasing the European Games here in Azerbaijan to those countries." "We have got substantial interest not only in terms of Europe but also far further afield as well: North America and South America to China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India to name just a few countries. The coverage has been substantial, quite exceptional for an inaugural broadcast event. Some people are claiming they can't even get enough of the European Games and want more.” “We should never forget that ISB was appointed only in February last year. We've always talked about how compressed this entire project has been into two-and-a-half years, 30 months. But from a broadcasting perspective it certainly hasn't been 30 months, it's been about 16 or 17 months. And that's a huge reflection on Manolo Romero president of ISB and his incredible global standing in the world of broadcasting and the excellent job he and the commercial team at BEGOC have done. We have 72 per cent penetration in the market in those 45 countries across the whole of Europe. So we can confidently say that the majority of Europe has access to the European Games.” President and chief executive of ISB Manolo Romero said: “In Europe we have 45 countries covering the Games of the 50 countries competing in the Games. Of those, 27 are Olympics rights holders and 34 are free-to-air broadcasters. In the rest of the world, we have 100 additional countries receiving, 46 of those are Olympic rights holders and 27 are free-to-air, including Australia, China and Japan. The average daily programming is two hours per day in those countries.” “In addition to that we have digital coverage via Baku2015.com, Youtube and the broadcasters' own sites. The average daily programming is 5.7 hours per day. And many of those rights holders have very extensive multi-channel digital programming. Some are using the entirety of what we send. The feedback has been very positive in terms of quality of the coverage. Many broadcasters are telling us the venues look magnificent, the look of the Games is fantastic, many of them say the look is Olympic standard.”