As Americans prepare for what they consider to be the biggest sporting event of the year, the 57th Super Bowl, the rest of the world doesn’t care. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but from an American perspective, it’s easy to overestimate the global appeal of the greatest sport of (American) football.
Speaking of football, football, that is to say football itself from a European perspective, goes far beyond the super bowl in terms of global interest. The FIFA World Cup final, contested every four years to cap a month-long tournament of 32 nations, is truly the biggest game on earth, regularly reaching more than a billion people around the world .
According to FIFA, the 2018 World Cup final between France and Croatia reached an average live audience of 517 million viewers, with more than 1.1 billion people tuning in for its 90 minutes. The Qatar 2022 final reached almost 1.5 billion people according to preliminary figures, while the average live audience for Argentina’s dramatic victory over France remains to be seen. The 2022 Super Bowl pales in comparison, averaging 99.2 million viewers on NBC and an estimated 30-50 million viewers worldwide.
