This is my first thread and I have thought about the topic for a while. I wasn`t sure whether I should pin this down... But I hope for a vivid, honest and straightforward debate. The thing is I read about the Arsenal vs Manchester match last November. I remember that I heard somewhere that a billion people watched that game. That would have been more than the World Cup final. For me that figure smelled a kind of fishy. Then, a few days ago I came across an article called "The great viewing mirage - Or how what was said to be a global audience of a billion turned out to be just eight million. Nick Harris distinguishes between fact and fiction in the 2007 television viewing figures" published in "The Independent". The journalist interviewed the spokesperson of the FA asking him why the real TV figures were so much lower than his estimate. He answered: "I said it could be a billion viewers worldwide". How does it come that a sports event which was promoted to have a higher TV audience than the World Cup final and the Super Bowl put together had in fact such low ratings. The handball world cup final between Poland and Germany had three times as many viewers than Arsenal vs Man U . If the PL lies about that figure - how real are the other figures that are given out by the PL and reported by the press without further investigation. What is behind the hype? I hope nobody feels hurt by this thread but it simply bothers me. Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/tvs-great-viewing-mirage-768839.html
Seriously, it has come to the point that even I, not being English and all, get annoyed that pretty much every second thread here has titles like "Premier League - hype and reality", "David Beckham is overrated [ok, this would actually be kinda retro if someone started it today]", "England sucks" etc. Don't you guys have leagues or teams on your own to talk about? FIFA and the NFL "lie" about their viewing figures as well. Actually, it's more marketing by giving potential audiences instead of actual viewing figures - which are pretty hard to get internationally. 8 million sounds pretty low, though - not that I want to accuse anyone of lying, but still .
Bit harsh to single out the Premier League. La Liga have done it with Real vs Barcelona for years. Fifa say even the most uninspiring of world cup group stage games get 100's of million. Of course, NFL do it every year with the Super Bowl. It must be more than 8 million though. It won't count all those across the world who watched in sports bars and pubs, who are probably the majority of the viewers. A Hong Kong company paid £100 million for the Hong Kong rights alone. They wouldn't have done that for only a handful of viewers.
As it says in the article the UK figures don't count people who watch 'out of home', people in pubs for example. There's also the fact that in many places Premier League games are not free to air. This is nothing new however, there have been threads in the England forums before where we've discussed over-inflated viewing figures.
OK , I agree with most of the statements here. And i know that out-of-home figures aren`t included which would lift the number of viewers significantly. And yet when I heard about the billion viewers for the first time i thought well that sounds unlikely, but maybe 500 mio. It is that kind of psychological trick that is also used in settlement negotiations. You offer an amount of money to the other party and the first number you mention sets the tone. (like "I pay you 100,000 $ for your broken arm") But I disagree with you, Teso, when you say those viewing numbers are irrelevant because "out-of-home viewing" is not included. They left out this number, because there is no scientific way to determine that number - and that speaks actually in favour of the scientific value of the research mentioned in the article. As i say the number might be significantly higher, but since the "in-home viewers" are the only ones who can be observed, they are more than relevant.
No they're not. Because the entire topic is irrelevant. What possible importance does the Premier League's tendency to hype viewing figures have to anything? So they said "a billion" when they should have said "up to a billion people could conceivably see some or all of this game". They're marketeers. You don't caveat bullshit, you just sling it out there. It's like clubs who say "we have a hundred million fans worldwide" when what they actually mean is "we know for sure that there are x supporter's groups in existence around the world because they're affiliated with us and we have made a rough guess about each group's membership and then mulitiplied that by some random but flattering factor in order to project the size of our fanbase, which could in reality be much smaller than this because, let's face it, we haven't got a clue really." For a first thread, you couldn't have picked a more trivial topic.
Really? Because a few weeks ago I was in Ann Arbor, at a pub, watching an FA Cup match, complete with a drink in my hand, teaching a friend as to how the FA Cup format works. And believe it or not, there were other people watching too. I am so shocked that people outside of England, be they ex-patriots or natives who like football go to bars and pubs to watch games. I mean this is a whole new revelation!
From personal experience, I know there are hundreds of people who watch Prem games in pubs here in Amsterdam itself. And that English Premiership is easily available in millions of homes in Asia and attracts high viewership figures for games like Arsenal-Utd.
You can go anywhere in the world and you would see an english match on tv... millions and millions watch... but does it really matter?