According to data from the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, the most-watched FA Cup games of the past 20 years, by peak audience, were the 1996 Manchester United-Liverpool final (13.3 million) and the 2005 Arsenal-Manchester United final (12.8 million), while the most popular FA Cup game in history was the 1970 Leeds-Chelsea final, when the country's second and third-ranked teams drew a peak audience of 28.5 million.

WSJ: FA Cup's Old Habits Die Hard

There is little data on the economic impact on Olympic cities, but Mr Baade studied what the 1994 soccer World Cup did to its nine American host cities.

ECONOMIST: Britain's Olympic bid

Now mobile network operators are just starting to realize how they can shop our location data to advertisers (with our consent of course), to give us discounts on everything from a cup of coffee to groceries if we happen to be nearby.

FORBES: From Stalker To Friend: Mobile Network Introduces Location-Based Advertising