Clearly 400+ million people didn’t watch the FA Cup Final this year - that figure seems to only come from the FA themselves, and after searching around their site for a bit I can’t find any source for where they got it (it’s tough to even find a source where they mention that figure). Maybe that’s the potential global audience if everyone with the international channels showing it decided to watch the game, or something like that.
One thing I would point out though is that English football is extraordinarily popular in southeast asia and parts of Africa, and probably other areas as well - in southeast asia for instance I found that if you introduce yourself as English, your interlocutor will immediately start rattling off football clubs, trying to guess which one you support (“English? Oh, Liverpool? Tottenham? West Ham? Southampton? …”), so you can’t rule out a high viewing figure a lot higher than the 10% of viewers in England that watch the game. But anything in the hundreds of millions does sound a bit ridiculous, and I’m sorry I can’t find where the FA ‘sources’ that figure.
I live in Sweden, and while the Champions Leage were all over the place – even though there is no competitive Swedish team in that leage – I didn’t know that there has been an FA Cup final recently, at all. Based on that, although very acecdotal of course, I’d say that there is not a very big interest in this game outside of Britain. - So I don’t believe the figures, but what the do I know?
I think that the figure is the subject of conflation of two ideas:
a) The number of people who watch a match, and
b) The number of households/people who have the possibility of watching a match.
For example, here in the US, the match could have been watched by well over 150 million people, one supposes, based solely upon the fact that their cable system offered it. The number who will have actually watched it is a tiny fraction of that amount.
Quite right. ‘Potential audience’ is a more correct term, and one which it’s possible to encounter at times, but not in publicity being pushed out for any upcoming fixture.
Edit: even then, ‘potential audience’ tends to be replaced with ‘the total population of the countries with which we have broadcast agreements’, which is different again.
It was on at 9am here too…by the time I remembered it was on, it was over. That FA Cup final on WWoS probably was cut up between segments of ice boat racing from Lake Geneva Wisconsin and some bits of the Monaco Grand Prix, with Jackie Stewart commentating. Followed by pro bowling and the dulcet tones of Chris Schenkel. The good ol’ days, indeed.
It was on Canal+ in Spain, which automatically means several thousand bars showing it, plus the people who saw it at home. I don’t know how many actually watched, but if anybody who was in a bar while the TV was showing it got counted, that can be a lot of people.
