World Record Welcome to Euro 2008

Biggest Ever Advert Greets Football Fans at Vienna

The world’s biggest billboard has been grabbing the attention of football fans flying into Vienna Airport for the closing stages of Euro 2008.

Covering an area of more than 50 football pitches, online betting company Betfair has spent the last four months growing different kinds of plants to spell out the message ‘NO.1 FOR FOOTBALL AND STILL GROWING!’. It’s now been officially ratified by the Guinness Book of World Records(TM) as the largest advertisement ever seen.

With dimensions of 1,380m by 316m and total area of 436,000 sqm, local farmers and horticulturists have been working on the field since February. It can be seen on the final approach to Vienna International Airport. The advertisement’s official record title is ‘The World’s Largest Advertising Hoarding’.

It took nine tonnes of wheat seed, 53,000 marigold plants, 1.5 kilometres of cotton netting as well as rape, camomile, mustard, clover, poppies and grass to create the billboard. The individual letters are 44 metres ‘high’ and up to 41 metres wide.

• Measurements: 1,380 metres x 316 metres; total area: 436,250 sqm
• Billboard area is equivalent of:

- 50 football pitches
- 651 tennis courts
- 62 x London’s Trafalgar Square

• You could fit approximately 4,847,222 footballs in it!
• Or Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadion (venue for the final) – 8.9 times
• The length is the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower laid end-to-end 4.2 times or…

- 5.7 London Canary Wharf tower
- 7.5 London ‘Gherkins’
- 1.7 Burj Dubai (when finished – world’s tallest building)
- 135 London Routemaster buses (length), 314 by width

• Size of the letters: 44 metres high x 21- 41 metres wide.
• Plants used:

“No.1″ & “GROWING” = Rape (8kg of seed) + Mustard (10kg seed)
“FOOTBALL” = Grass (40kg seed)
“AND” = French marigolds (more than 53,000 plants)
“STILL” = Poppies (10kg seed)
“FOR” = Earth
Border = Camomile (70kg seed)
Background = Wheat (9 tonnes of seeds)

• ‘Betfair’ logo = Cotton – 1.5km x 5.8m wide
• Time frame:

18.02.08 Measuring of the field
28.02.08 Sowing of camomile and wheat
Early March Measuring of the letters with a total of 650 measuring points, duration: two days. Afterwards ploughing of the slogan
25.03.08 Sowing of the grass
07.04.08 Sowing of rape/mustard/clover
15.05.08 Planting French marigold

01.06.08 Creation of Betfair logo with lime and cotton geomembrane.

Source: Betfair