Kia ora, Talofa, Ma’lelei, Bula, Aloha and Welcome to Season 10 Episode 17 of Breakfast Bites, by TEIVOVOdigital.com – a wrap of Pasifika people’s sports news, on Thursday morning 18 July 2024, where it is partly cloudy and 24 degrees Celsius at 5am.
 
Coming to you with tons of hanisi from the 180th meridian, in the middle of the blue continent.
 
In Rugby League: History plus the vast majority of the 50,000+ fans at Suncorp Stadium last night and five million more Queensland fans in Papua New Guinea, were against them, but the NSW Blues won the State of Origin shield for the first time since 2021 after a stunning three-minute blitz by Jarome Luai and Mitchell Moses broke the game open to seal a hard-fought 14-4 win over the Maroons.
 
In Football & SportsBiz: Despite an ugly finish to Copa América in Miami, the tournament and EURO2024 shattered several international soccer viewership records Stateside.
 
After Argentina and Spain won their respective finals Sunday, the audience numbers show that FOX Sports aired the most-watched Copa América and EURO2024 in US English-language TV viewership history:

The Finals:
· Argentina-Colombia @ 6 million TV viewers
· Spain-England: 6.4 million 

Total tournament average:
· Copa América: 1.4 million 
· Euro 2024: 1.7 million viewers

The total EURO2024 viewership average is up 34% from the 2021 tournament on ESPN. The total Copa América audience average is up 44% from 2016, which was the last time the tournament was played in the US.

In the Olympic Games: Bet you didn’t know that the IOC requires cities hosting the summer Olympic games to have a minimum of forty thousand hotel rooms available.
 
The Olympics have never come in under budget. The 2014 Sochi Olympics were the most expensive @ US$28.9Billion, but the 2016 Rio Olympics @ US$23.6B were the most over budget by 352%.
 
It took Montreal until 2006 to pay off the last of its debt from the 1976 Olympic Games, while Greece’s billions in Olympics debt helped bankrupt the country.
 
Viva la France!
 
And only in America: Boston Celtics star and the NBA Finals MVP 2024, Jaylen Brown tweeted recently, after he was not included on the USA Basketball team for the Paris Olympic Games, that “for sure Nike played a role” in him missing the team.
 
Brown has been a sneaker-free agent since his deal with Adidas expired in 2021. 
 
Brown also recently said that Bronny James “is not a pro player.”
 
Say what Jaylen? Bronny is the son of . . . you know who!
 
That’s a wrap peeps!
 
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Mahalo and Ka kite; for TEIVOVOdigital.com, I’m Culden Kamea tanking you all too mass for all your love and support.
 
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