The super bowl does have a massive concert and all the crap that goes along with it. It's like 85% hoopla, 15% game. Game usually bores the hell out of me. The Pats ones have been OK, but alot of the time someone gets blown out.
Why on earth would the NFL lie about any kinds of numbers? They are, by far, the richest sports league in the world. No one, and I mean no one comes close. European soccer leagues have wet dreams about making the kind of money the NFL makes. Don't get me wrong, I love soccer, but I'm also a huge Green Bay Packers fan, so insulting football is really not a good way to start off a conversation.
Fixed your post. In other news, the most watched event of 2005 : "The Wiggles, live in concert!" Most potentially watched event of 2005 : "Dog grooming championships, LIVE from Tuscon!!!" In my household, that is.
so are you saying their claim is true? Or are you saying that although they are saying something that isn't true, somehow it isn't a lie? As to why they'd lie, well it's great hype isn't it? Look how huge this event is, not just here, but around the world too!
So then, it really comes down to... for the CL, which of these two sites do you believe?: or ESPN says Asia alone had over 100 million viewership(not potential, but actual) for the 2004-2005 season... while some media company in the US named Initiative stating 73 million.
Seems fairly clear that two different things are being measured. From the article Andy Mead provided, the event in question was the CL Final ALONE. In the Indian Televison article, the 100 million figure is the aggregate viewership in Asia for ALL CL matches during the season.
NFL would hype things up around super bowl time. they want average joe americans to believe it's world's most popular game. it's just a way to express american exceptionalizm. actual figure of super bowl viewrs is around 93million with 91mil being north american audience. and 1mil being uk audience. still, 1mil in the rest of the world is remarkable considering it has minimal popularity around the world. believe it or not, it's true that nfl is exaggerating its viewreship and popularity around the world. just go to superbowl.com you'll see what i mean.
I've seen similar numbers from various publications. Here's a breakdown by region: Approx. TV households (in millions) Asia Pacific .................630m (China 350m, India 100m) Europe .......................240m North America .............122m (USA 110m, Canada 12m) Latin America/Caribbean 120m Africa/Middle East .........70m Here's my conservative estimate. I'll use a modest 3 persons/household in my calculations: Asia .........2% of households -> 13m * 3 ~ 39m viewers Europe .....15% -> 36m * 3 ~ 108m viewers L.America ...5% -> 6m * 3 ~ 18m viewers Africa/M.E. 5% -> 3.5m * 3 ~ 11m viewers Total worldwide viewers: ~ 176million