Super Bowl Viewing Figures

[kevin_standlee]

Having seen the discussion about the viewing audience for the Super Bowl and other big events, Cheryl wrote to me about some things she dug up, and with her permission, I'm re-posting it here:

It appears that in many years the Superbowl is indeed the most watched event on TV - certainly the most watched sporting event. It is only outdone by the soccer World Cup and by Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, which don't happen every year.

The FA Cup, as far as I can gather, is nowhere near Superbowl standard. The UEFA Champions' League final is starting to run the Superbowl close, but hasn't got their yet. Superbowls hover around the 95m mark. The Liverpool-Milan final in 2005 was watched by 73m.
F1 Grand Prix sometimes break the 50m barrier, and they are the next most-popular annual events.

Caveats on this.

Around 80% of the Superbowl audience is in the US. It has numbers, but it is not globally popular the way F1 and soccer are, nor is it likely to increase much as the NFL's attempts at selling the game outside the US have been a damp squib everywhere except in Germany.

There may be sporting events in China that attract bigger audiences that we don't know about. I've heard it suggested that over 100m Chinese will watch a Premiership match if there is a Chinese player in it, but data on Chinese viewing can be unreliable. Then again, we do know that viewership in China is growing rapidly.

When you include non-annual events, the Superbowl gets blown away.
The audience for the 2002 World Cup Final was at least 250m (though nowhere near FIFA's claimed 1.1 billion). 2006 was somewhat smaller, probably due to the early exit of Brazil.

When people in India start getting more TVs the Cricket World Cup will far exceed Superbowl as well. Currently only about 125m homes in India have a TV, but the population is 1.2bn. Around a third of all Americans watch the Superbowl. Given that Indians are much more passionate about cricket than Americans are about gridiron, we could expect an audience of over 400m for a world cup final featuring India.

Some of the data sources:
http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/media_matter/matter_010406.asp
http://www.fifa.com/en/marketing/newmedia/index/0,3509,10,00.html
http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/internationals/article1166522.ece
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/sport.cfm?id=295772006

Comments

Re: Dogs

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The Westminister Kennel Club Dog Show is certainly popular within its own little genre and has what might be considered a cult following, but it's an order of magnitude off from the Super Bowl.

According to http://www.talkinpets.com/newsarchives/2003/feb2203.htm (which is, I think, scraping an AP story without crediting it), the 2003 event got a 3.7 rating, which is respectable (4.6 million viewers), but hardly Super Bowl-class. That's just what a few minutes of Google searches found, I admit, along with tidbits such as the WKC outdrawing the Stanley Cup Final (sob).

Re: Dogs

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

When I was living in Spain in 1993, my husband wrote me email that explained how much he missed me, noting, "To show you the depths to which I have sunk, I watched the Westminster dog show on television last night. Something that looked like the busines end of a mop won."

He also remarked that the commercials weren't nearly as good as the Superbowl ads.

[thirdworld.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's interesting. I know the Euro soccer/football clubs have huge followings out east. China is a bit of a black hole when it comes to stats. For India, going by my Indian friends, one household often has a bunch of family members in it, and big matches see many more people surrounding TV sets than statistics even come close to manage. It certainly brings up a point. India and China could dwarf American TV audiences, but are sheer numbers the only criteria?

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to see how many people are watching the World Cup. I wouldn't be surprised if it is higher than estimated as people watch from bars or friends Tv's.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Cheryl said to me about this [again, passed on by permission]:

Grant raises an interesting question about viewing figures and the meaning of "the world's biggest stage". I can think of three ways in which the "size" or importance of a sporting event might be measured: the number of viewers, the 'quality' of the sport, and the amount of money involved. On viewing figures the World Cup is a clear winner. Quality? Well who knows? If quality were a factor, why is the world's most popular sport one in which defences are so dominant that a bunch of A-league no-hopers stand a good chance against the best in the world if they just have a little luck? Money, however, might favor the Superbowl. A huge audience is all very well, but if that audience is in India or China and has very little buying power then from a commercial point of view it is less valuable than a smaller but very rich audience in America. For now.

[(Anonymous)]

Euro 2008 final viewing figure estimated at 300 million, as it is a once every four year event lets multiply US Superbowl (4 x 73 = 292 million) close, of course Euros are a secondary level Football tournament in comparison to a World Cup.