Here is the article

http://www.atptennis.com/1/en/2007news/federer_power100.asp

And they are probably about right! If there is a slight critic I could make about Federer is that since his domination of the tour, he has not really been able to influence the ATP people in changing the schedule or balancing the US / European tournaments. His achievements (with Nadal's) has done a lot for tennis as it is now a more popular than it has been for the last 20 years (I am taking into account the global market and not the US only). However he is in a prime position now and could have had a bit more leverage on some arrogant if not stupid decisions taken by DeVilliers the ATP President. Let's not forget, Fed is becoming one of the greatest athlete of all time and will be in the record book when someone like Wood (currently nber 2 in this list) will be replaced!

The list is again very "American" : Ecclestone being nber 57!!!!! is a joke. This guy has the world automobile industry eating in his hands but they consider Dick Pound (the Anti-doping guy) more powerful !!??!!!

Dick Pound is a nice guy but he is not really efficient at preventing the drugs cheats in sport, is he? It took him close to 2 years to get Landis who was guilty like hell. And many druggies are going on unaffected. So what kind of power as he got?

That list is a joke to be honest. As you say Bernie is so low.... they have a third baseman at baseball and a nascar driver as well as David Beckham ahead of him in the list.... amongst many others.... I don't give it much credence. Of course Roger would be the number one power broker in Tennis, but the list is otherwise on the whole nonsense.

Dick Pound????? :banghead: *what* has he done, exactly, that gives him that much power??? The fact that the UCI truly dislike the man and generally ignore anything he says, suggests that he might *not* be more powerful than Ecclestone. :shrug:

These are the criteria for selection:

To figure out who should be on the list and in which position, BusinessWeek assembled a panel of 20 seers from sports and media. We gave our panelists several criteria. Among them: how individuals rate vs. their peers; how much money they control, generate, or influence; how long they have exercised power; and how lasting their impact on a sport or the larger world of sports will be.

I like this comment from one of the guy:

"What a cute list. They've never heard of Sepp Blatter or Michel Platini, either, I suspect. "

Josef Blatter, the President of the world's most popular sport federation comes 29th!!!! This guy should simply be top of the list with no equal as everybody knows how important football is for the worlds politicians.

What a waste of time - why didn't they just say it was an American list and then they could have ignored all those annoying Europeans entirely!

Let's face it - most of these people have no influence on any sports outside America!

Hi T, i wanted to post a new topic myself but this fits your topic very well;

For the stats-fanatics;

This is an intresting article;
http://awis.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-is-m...ne-golf-or.html

At first i was glad -although i'm much more active in playing golf than tennis btw- to see those results as i can't stomach the opinion, usually an american one, that tennis lost popularity since Fed became no.1.
But to be honest the comparison is full of holes (what's in a..) so i did some research myself. I think this comparison is more reliable.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/atptennis....com/?metric=uv

I won't be surprised if the world wide TV ratings are showing us the same pattern...

Anyway; Beckham is ranked above Federer; i didn't know that influence on catwalks would count in this list :doh:

That is a US list drawn up by 20 panellists who are pretty all involved in US sport or sport management in the US or sport writing in the US with the exception of..... Martina Hingis!

A 26-yr old tennis player is the counter-balance for an otherwise heavy-weight panel drawn from a world dominated by sports like Gridiron, Baseball, and Basketball, a world that thinks that motor racing means Nascar and Golf means the PGA Tour.

I am not surprised that Fed is low down the list. He is a very low-key person. Not a criticism, merely an observation, but he is far more backward than the only other comparable individual sportsman, Tiger Woods, about projecting his ego and his world view, and that is hardly surprising:
a. Woods has been at the top (in terms of endorsements and playing ability) for 11 years now - Federer has only been there for 4 years - and Woods is also 4 years older than Federer, who is still only 26.
b. Woods comes from a sport where the boundaries between the players and businessmen/administrators are more blurred. In tennis the 'jock' is very much more noticably not in the boardroom - he is bouncing about on the court in shorts and playing/operating in an entirely different world to the CEO as well as usually being much younger, golfer's careers go on for much longer. In golf the pro can play a 3-4 hour round with the CEO wearing the same sort of clothes and talk with him. Whilst golf pro's keep fit, they don't have to lead the same sort of monkish existence as the tennis player.
c. Woods is American. There is far more of a star culture in the US (and most other countries) than in Switzerland, where leaders of all sorts (and their political system is organised so they don't really have them) are expected to operate discretely behind the scenes and not be at all ostentatious. I'd say that even Agassi is a bigger 'star' than Federer. Also, the huge power of the US media is generally with Woods - an effect that may be enhanced by the fact that Woods is mixed-race in a sport previously dominated by whites which gives him a sort of additional moral force by virtue of being there.
d. Woods only ever has to communicate in his mother tongue to a world that operates pretty much exclusively in his mother tongue.
e. Since he realised his potential at the age of 22 Fed has had an absolute maximum potential of 8 or so years at the top, which no doubt concentrates the mind on the sport to the exclusion of extra-curricular matters. Woods has already had 11 years, and there is no reason why he can't have another 6-10 - he has more time to look up and see what's going on outside.

Fed may well be chiselling away hard in the background and we may not know about it - he may not be, not wanting the distraction.

Whichever it is, personally I find his relative modesty a reason for liking him.

Excellent links and post GP. I personally would put more credit onto link 1 than 2 because on pga.com one follows all golf tournaments while on the ATP site people follow mostly the rankings and other stories while they go on the tournaments own sites for day to day news and results. Hence the large discrepancy.

It is clear however that Golf is much more attractive to corporations and buisnesses as the potential amateur golf players is the ideal target for selling him/her expensive things. This is why it is forced upon us on TV more than tennis. Golf players can be as young but those who tend to play the game tend to be much richer than the average tennis player. Playing Golf still costs lots of money. Those who have money and power are more likely to play Golf also as we know many decisions/meetings happen on a golf course. But I am convinced that in pure audience numbers tennis is the preferred sport despite having more access to Golf tournaments than Tennis out there.

If you think about it, the same applies for F1, many of us love it, not because we can drive like mad on our roads and compare each other with the F1 driver but because the sponsors behind F1 make it available for free on TV, creating an interest for us that we woudl not have otherwise. I much doubt for instance that f1 would be available on pay-tv only one day. It would be the end of this sport!

:) You can always trust americans.... when it comes to creating rankings like this...everyone must view the criteria through an american prism..... if it is not about celebrity or tv or money...it just doesn't count for much..... Now lewis hamilton stands to make 10 million pounds a year
should he win the f1 crown this year.....I wonder where that will place
him ..cause by current exchanges that is 20 million dollars......
But , how about those who make those mclaren cars reliable etc etc...

Anyway.. makes good reading for the bosses mentioned and the like of tiger woods.... I remember when one time Cherie Blair was the most powerful woman in Britain... I think at the moment they will rank J K rowling as the most powerful.... I wonder what the Queen thinks...

Not so sure about the last part T, i actually think there's more free tennis than golf available on the TV .
Luckily enough in Holland we do have this "sport1" channel (14 euro a month) which broadcasts every tennis slam/master serie and more golf than i can handle. :wacko:
Anyway; the following article gives an objective view on world wide popularity of different sports . These are all absolute values though, so the asian countries are putting a lot of weight in it.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Most-Popular-Spo...World&id=551180

Most concerning that the list does not feature a woman until the 70s with the top female being Sharapova of all people, now that is very sad beign as her power stems from he rmarketability and image. We haven't moved on much in terms of gender equality in the world of sport have we?

Nope. I'm guessing that the equal prize money thing has been done to death on the board in the past?? It's always an interesting debate with these kinds of lists around.