Who is paying attention to the Pan Am games?

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They’re promoted as the largest international sporting competition next to the Asian Games. Bigger than even the Olympics, in terms of the number of events, and competitors.

But are the Pan Am games putting Toronto on the map, internationally?

Just over a week ago, the New York times described the host city as “indifferent” to the sporting spectacle, and this afternoon Scot Urquhart went out to try to gauge whether the games were making an impression, outside of Canada.

The media centre isn’t exactly packed, but to be fair, most of the 1200 photographers, journalists, and cameras accredited at these games are actually out covering events.

But is anybody paying attention, to what they say?

It may depend on the country.

“There are many countries that have athletes that are competing here and they don’t compete at Olympic games so they are like — ahh — little Olympic games,” says Andrea Sosa Cabios, Deutsche Presse-Agentur Correspondent.

Or perhaps, on the sport.

Andrea was born in Argentina but works for DPA, the German international press agency.

“Swimming for Argentina because they have a gold medal that they didn’t think they would have.”

Nick Butler works for an international sports website based in London England.

“The impression I’m getting from these Pan American games; these games have been a big event for the countries in South America and Central America perhaps more than in Canada and the United States.”

He may be right. Here in North America the interest is decidedly muted, even though Canada and the United States are leading the medal haul.

ESPN, the American broadcast rights holder didn’t even show the wild Gold medal finish of the game that’s touted as their national past-time.

Nor did they send the hi-lites out to other broadcasters. Not that it seemed to matter.

Matt Edwards at NBC News Channel, the network distributor for video content said today that they have not received one call saying that we need more Pan Am.

And a counterpart at CNN said ” we haven’t really been doing any sort of Pan Am coverage at all ”

They’re not alone. Of the 41 countries competing in these games only 25 have reporters actually covering the events. So it would seem that games may be wide in scope , but much more narrow, in terms of global interest.