It is understood that between 35 and 40 tickets allocated to Earle ended up in the hands of the marketing company said to have orchestrated an ambush marketing effort on behalf of the beer brand Bavaria via a third party. Thirty-six women in orange mini dresses were ejected from Soccer City during yesterday's match when Fifa officials decreed they were part of an organised ambush marketing scheme. They were questioned for several hours until after the match had finished. Bavaria denied the women had any links to its campaign.
The debacle comes on top of calls for England matches to be removed from the remit of ITV, despite drawing in more than twenty million viewers for last Saturday's England match. The post-match coverage was dominated by the blunder at Technicolor's London transmission centre that meant 1.5m ITV HD viewers were treated to a sponsorship trailer instead of Steven Gerrard's opening goal.
