Eurosport will provide Metro with all the latest news and results of the IAAF World Championships, feature articles, exclusive interviews with the athletes and special commentaries from experienced journalists.

 

Metro's free newspapers already have a significant appeal to the advertising community both locally and internationally. Metro Finland is distributed in Helsinki, Tampere, Turku and Lahti through an enhanced network that includes public transportation points, luxury hotels and major high traffic locations. Metro Finland prints more than 100,000 copies daily and reaches more than 240,000 readers in the greater Helsinki area, Tampere, Turku and Lahti.

 

Eurosport will broadcast the entirety of the IAAF World Championships LIVE. The morning and afternoon sessions are LIVE, from 09.00 CET to 14.00 CET and from 17.30 CET to 21.00 CET. German Champion Heike Drechsler will be Eurosport's viewers' guide for 9 days of exhaustive LIVE action at Helsinki's Olympic stadium.

 

Pelle Törnberg, CEO of Metro International, commented: "The Athletics World Championships in Helsinki in August is one of the largest sporting events this year. By collaborating with Eurosport's strong coverage of the Championships, Metro can provide all the news and information that sports fans, tourists and everyone following the games will need during their visit - from event and tour guides to results, and from interviews with the world's leading sports stars and famous spectators to the major national and international news."

 

Laurent-Eric Le Lay, EUROSPORT'S Managing Director of Broadcast, said: "EUROSPORT is very pleased to be offering top quality sports content to METRO Helsinki for this major sporting event and is very content to be gaining great international exposure during the 2005 IAAF World Championships in Helsinki."

 

The Eurosport Group is today the leading multimedia platform in Europe with Eurosport, Eurosport 2, eurosport.com and Eurosportnews. The pan-European channel Eurosport, available in 19 different languages, reaches over 104 million homes and 240 million viewers across 54 countries. Eurosport 2, the new sports channel launched on January 10th 2005, is already transmitted to 17 million households in 6 languages across 39 different countries. Available in 5 languages, eurosport.com is now clearly established as one of the leading pan-European sports websites with up to 176 million pages viewed (May 2005) and 3.6 million unique visitors per month (January 2005). Eurosportnews provides up-to-date worldwide sports news and is transmitted worldwide.

 

Metro is the largest and fastest growing international newspaper in the world. 57 daily Metro editions are published in 81 major cities in 18 countries in 18 languages across Europe, North & South America and Asia.  Metro has a unique global reach - attracting a young, active, well-educated audience of 16.8 million daily readers and 35 million weekly readers. Metro has an equal number of male and female readers and 70% are under the age of 45.  Metro's advertising sales have grown at a compound annual rate of 47% since the launch of the first edition in 1995.

 

Metro International S.A. 'A' and 'B' shares are listed on the Stockholmsbörsen 'O-List' under the symbols MTROA and MTROB.

Pelle Törnberg, CEO                                                          tel: +44 (0) 20 7016 1300

Henrik Persson, Corporate Communications                        tel: +46 (0) 8 562 000 87

 

The press release can also be downloaded from the enclosed link: