Old World Cup themes

Apologies if this gets dusted off every four year - mods, please feel free to bin or merge with an old thread if necessary!

The amazing ITV Sport mock in The Gallery section had me looking for the original 70s World of Sport sting, which has led me down a ridiculous YouTube wormhole where I've just found this 1966 intro, complete with Eurovision ident (was this a "world feed"-style arrangement or did both BBC and ITV use this?). Quite a toe-tapper, mind.



And then it gets better... 1970! The only year ITV beat the BBC in the ratings, I think... this must have looked great if you'd just forked out for a new colour set.


Jimmy Hill's neckwear deserves its own embedded video:


But 1974's effort, in a year when only Scotland had qualified from the Home Nations, is a little lacklustre, though anyone who remembers Capital Gold Sport may find the theme familiar. (Corking vox-pops at the start, though.)


All these from a YouTube user called Schnipp08, who has a load of old British and German (mainly sport) presentation material.

Or indeed Radio Clyde's Superscoreboard - who are still using the same tune, albeit with various whooshes on top. (I believe Richard Park introduced it to both Clyde and Capital)

Yep with Jonathan Pearce on commentating duties

One of that peculiar genre of marches used as sports themes

It's called Lap of honour by The London Stadium Orchestra - who I've always assumed was a music union busting alias for a well known musician of the day.

For reasons I won't go fully into here, just hearing the first few bars still to this day chills my blood, followed by a warming burst of adrenaline...

I always liked 1986 and Aztec Gold:


Not withstanding the fact it was used outside of the World Cup coverage on ITV, it hung around in one form or another until 1992.

World Cup 66 sounds like a rejected Gerry Anderson / Barry Gray theme!

World Cup 66 is a bit of KPM Library music (can't remember the title) composed by Johnny Pearson. The London Stadium Orchestra is of course simply a quickly invented name for a session band, in this case it's library music from the Standard catalogue. Composer was Mike Vickers. Standard uses a variety of names for its session orchestras, including The Pandora Orchestra and The South Bank Orchestra.

I think that devalued it for me - there's something special about those World Cup/ Euros/ Olympics themes in that you only ever hear them for a few weeks each summer (and constantly).

Remember the year the BBC used the Jellicle Ball from Cats?

I don't - it was the year before I was born.

I love the track though.

Yes, that's true. I never heard "Nessun Dorma" when it was used as the theme tune, but in the years afterwards it was always clear that it was a football song, even without knowing the source. It was only years later that I actually saw the BBC titles from 1990:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqzz7B7V2IE

They must've played it at every opportunity in 1990, right? We hear it heavily in this vid of BBC continuity for Cameroon v England - first in a long advert, then in the match intro. Plus Des Lynam forgetting his lines shockingly-but-not-very.


(Yeah, Blackadder at 7pm, they must've cut stuff out. And there were late schedule changes...)

Then after the final, a 3-minute version of their theme!
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sffX9Wrbw9w

It sounds like the BBC were trying to recreate "Nessun Dorma" at some later tournaments, by using other classical pieces, but they couldn't have quite the same impact. There'll never be a better sports theme tune imo - but it's probably cheating if you get Puccini to write it. (Lynam and his wife had the idea to use it, didn't they?)




I... I... It's just so out of character. Thank you for the info though.

About the 1966 BBC and ITV theme tunes, the ITV Carousel historian sayeth:



For the international broadcast BBC and ITV worked together, but presumably neither would want to show the other's name in their domestic coverage. Is there a way to find out the music the BBC used in 1966?

A few online sources have Eurovision's Thunderbird-ish theme tune listed as the "BBC" theme, just because "BBC" appears in the video. It's an exciting piece of music - it's great how it gets more and more loud and hyped, then they switch to a boring picture of a field somewhere. Kinda like the Premier League.

Nessun Dorma took on a life of its own after it was used for Italia 90 having originally been a part of opera. Personally I can't stand opera* by itself but breakout pieces like Nessum Dorma go mainstream especially when they're used as TV theme tunes so that's nice.

Aztec Gold featured not only as part of the 1986 World Cup theme on ITV but later The Big Match as well. t ultimately became the theme tune to the Saint & Greavsie programme as well, which AFAIK was the only reason why the music hung around on the network until that show was finally dropped in 1992 - everything else using it had moved on by I think 1989.

* I prefer Firefox. Boom! Boom! *ahem* I'll get my coat.

1998 on the BBC - a re-tread if ever there was one:



The original piece "Pavane" is nothing like that - they changed it to make it 'bombastic'. The original is much gentler:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw8PurepHxk

ITV's had a bit more "get-up-and-go" energy to it...



[glowstick emoji]