Almost 50% of the World’s 7.05 Billion People Watch the Cup

Read Time:56 Second

Trending now: #mtnshortz3sixtyworld
Almost 3.2 billion people worldwide, roughly 46% of the world’s population, watched more than one minute of the 2010 World Cup. According to FIFA, this makes the tournament “the world’s most widely viewed sporting event.”
While it’s amazing that 46% of the world united to watch a single event, it’s arguably more incredible that 2 billion people, or about 29% of the world, sat down to watch more than 30 minutes of the Cup.
To put things into perspective, let’s compare viewership of the 2014 Super Bowl to the final match of the 2010 World Cup. The Seahawk’s win over the Broncos was seen by 111.5 million people while Spain’s 2010 victory had over 909 million viewers.
I realize that as the Super Bowl is a predominantly US event and the World Cup is a worldwide tournament, this is somewhat comparing apples to oranges. Even still, the fact that almost a billion people watched a single soccer match is mind blowing.
For those who are curious, the viewership stats were drawn from this report by FIFA.

Happy
Happy
0 %
Sad
Sad
0 %
Excited
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
Angry
0 %
Surprise
Surprise
0 %