Does the Super Bowl or the World Cup have more viewers worldwide?

Answer

In Asia the Superbowl is not watched hardly at all only by US expats, whose numbers are dwarfed by European expats. I would say even weekly premier league games quite comfortably garner more viewers than the Superbowl. In South East Asia alone a Premier League Match will get almost 25 million viewers, not counting North Asia, Middle East, Africa and South America.

World Cup by a large amount. The XXXIX Superbowl had an estimated 94 million viewers. The World Cup averages 1.1 billion viewers per day for the almost month long event. This year it is estimated that 28.8 billion viewers will watch the World Cup games.

You also have to take into consideration that the World Cup comes along every 4 years and that over 250 countries vie for a spot on the final roster of 32. So every effort is made to provide tv coverage of each game for each country.

Edited by Greekdish: Considering there's only 6 billion people in the world, how are 28.8 billion viewers gonna watch it?? Something like 1.2 billion will watch the games. They also wont be all watching at the same time. You will have 100 million or so per game. Also...there's only about 192 countries in the world, not 250. Please dont post idiotic facts without checking them (easily i might add) on the web.

Pardon me while I chuckle. The above answer's 94 million viewers is solely United States viewers who at one point or another tuned into the game. I must say I don't know how many games are played in the World Cup but the 28.8 billion comes from folks from all over the world tuning in to maybe 4 minutes of the Morocco V. Ivory Coast game one day and the France V. Italy game the next day. The Super Bowl figures are for one game. The World Cup figures are for ALL games in ALL rounds.

Regardless, according to an article found on msnbc.msn.com:
" Fact or fiction: Each year, this one gets tossed around in the media as if that stat was as black and white as the referee's shirt.

That may be due to NFL statements about potential global viewers. NFL.com says Super Bowl XLI will be televised in 232 countries and "available to an estimated worldwide audience of 750 million to 1 billion people."

But the NFL doesn't know how many people outside the United States actually watch the game, nor has the league ever "provided the media a figure of total worldwide viewership," said Brian McCarthy, an NFL spokesman.

"We do know U.S. viewership because Nielsen tells us," McCarthy added.

Nielsen cannot pinpoint how many people watch the game beyond American borders because "we are only able to track national numbers," said Brandi Preston, a spokeswoman for Nielsen Media Research.
The closest anyone has come to gauging global Super Bowl ratings is a tracking system devised by the New York-based media research firm Initiative, which collects data from 54 of the major TV markets from around the world. According to Initiative's most recent measurement, Super Bowl XL posted an average audience of 98 million, with 151 million tuning in at some point.

If you're number-crunching, that's 849 million short of a billion.

One 2006 sporting event did come close to the 1 billion mark: The World Cup final between Italy and France drew an average audience of 260 million, and 603 million people saw at least part of the game.

Answer: Fiction "

After reading this article. I would say the World Cup but that only makes common sense. More countries are interested in soccer than in American football.

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Actually, even the UEFA Euro Cup final draws a larger audience than the superbowl. In 2004 the worldwide audience was 279 million according to UEFA (source: http://www.uefa.com/competitions/euro/organisation/kind=32768/newsid=332293.html), although they don't specify wether this is ppl just tuning in or seeing the entire game. The same page gives the average number of viewers over all the games in the finals as 150 million. It's not unlikely, then, that even some group games in the Euro Cup had more viewers than the superbowl. That the final of the World Cup would have more seems rather certain.

First answer by Gavinhank. Last edit by Gavinhank. Contributor trust: 0 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 21 [recommend question]