According to a report released this week by the Future Sports + Entertainment group, the UEFA’s Champions League Final overtook the Super Bowl as the most watched television event in the world.
Per the report, the finals match between Manchester United and Barcelona attracted 109m viewers in its entirety, and “reached” 206m people, meaning they caught parts of the game. The Super Bowl, traditionally the biggest TV event in global club sport, attracted 106m live viewers for the whole thing, with a reach of 162m.
Santonio Holmes' Super Bowl winning catch
1. The Super Bowl is far more popular in the US than UEFA Championship is in Europe.
Comparing the total viewership as a percentage of population for each event we find that ~ 15% of the European continent tuned in to the UEFA Finals and ~ 32% of the US viewing public watched the Super Bowl. Considering the population of Europe is more than twice that of the USA one could argue as a cultural event, UEFA doesn’t enjoy the demographic reach of the NFL.
2. The NFL is doing a lousy job at going global.
Even the most die-hard European soccer fans admit the NFL brand of football is more exciting than traditional European brand of football, so why isn’t the NFL doing a better job of capturing a global audience?
10 most-watched events of 2009 – reach in parenthesis
- Champions’ League final 109m (206m)
- Super Bowl 106m (162m)
- Bahrain GP 54m (115m)
- Men’s 100m final 33m (95m)
- Federer-Roddick 29m (89m)
- Japan-South Korea (World Baseball Classic) 27m (82m)
- World Series game 6 26m (72m)
- NBA finals game 5 26m (59m)
- Masters final day 21m (49m)
- South Korea v China (badminton) 19m (56m)
