The Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi and American swimmer Michael Phelps media are the kings of the Olympic Games of Beijing 2008, until the third day of competition and according to the study by the University of Navarra

According to the report, the Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal is the third Olympic athlete with the highest global media coverage, while the Spanish delegation, thanks to success in cycling, has seven stars among the fifty most media the world and the United States accumulates eighteen athletes.

The study suggests that the most notable is the media explosion of American swimmer Michael Phelps, who after two days of competition went to occupy the eighth position in the world ranking the second, cutting 35 points of value to media Lionel Messi.



The men's cycling champion en route, Samuel Sanchez, is another big winners, because the amounts of initial position 108 to 28, while among minority sports only the slingshot china Du Li gets placed among the 50 stars of the Olympic Games.

The report, which has analyzed the global coverage of each of the 108 medals corresponding to 34 different tests given until August 11, believes that the medals achieved by the United States and Spain in the three first days of the Olympic Games media have greater value than those of other countries.

The Value Olympics Media Project is an international research project led and coordinated by ESIrg University of Navarra (Economy, Sport and intangible) and counts with the participation of various experts: Benno Torgler (Queensland University of Technology, Australia), Simon Chadwick ( Coventry University, England); Frank Pons (Université de Laval, Canada) and collaborations in El Salvador, Colombia and Chile.

The work is directed by Francesc Pujol, a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Navarra.