The tournament lands at two

The tournament opened on Thursday, on the other side of the Atlantic, so a good share of what this region actually wants to watch arrives between midnight and dawn.

That is not a fall in demand. It is a move in the hour, and the two get reported as the same thing.

A Cairo cafe is already awake at two in the morning. In a June like this one the city does its living after dark anyway, so a room that fills at one does not have to be talked into staying open until four. For once the accident of somebody else's broadcast schedule has landed on a market that was standing there already.

The Gulf is the other case. The hour is workable and the customer is not in the country, so a terrace that was screened and staffed for a full house gets a third of one.

What I keep seeing is plans written in January for an evening. Evening menus, evening offers, evening media weight, all of it assuming a competition behaves the way the last one did. The last one was a short flight away, in the winter, at a civilised hour. This one is not that, and nothing about the calendar was hidden.

The money will not go to the businesses holding the rights. It will go to the late kitchens, to the apps still taking orders at two, to the places whose licence and roster already allow a fourth hour after midnight, and to the operators who worked out in April that June would need a different shift pattern.

A tournament is inventory with a clock attached. Whoever is open when it runs owns it.