I’m not Australian, but I am reasonable sure that the Australian Rules Football Championship is the biggest sporting event of the year there:
For Germany, it can only be a football event. The biggest annually is the DFB cup final, played in Berlin’s Olympiastadion traditionally for the last 30 years or so in front of 80.000 people. There are no commercials on the broadcast, because it’s always broadcast by one of the public stations that are not allowed to send commercials after 8 PM and on weekends, which both applies in that case. But to be true, the importance of the DFB cup pales in comparison to the Bundesliga, that’s a competition stretching over 34 matchdays, but it’s where the money is in for commercial stations.
The biggest national sporting event imaginable is when we play in a World Cup final, and that happens quite often, with 8 participations we are the record holders. During a World Cup final with German participation, regular business comes to a halt and over 30 millions are watching on TV. Still no commercials, because those too are on public stations.
For many sports like the basketball and baseball finals its really only the host cities areas where people make a thing out of it. The networks love it when its 2 big market teams like New York and Los Angeles. Or the teams have national followings like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Little Kansas City - not so much.
So other than the 2 times the KC Royals made it to the WS, I never even watched the WS or knew who won.
In Taiwan, perhaps the Premier12 WBSC baseball tournament and World Baseball Classics. Baseball is huge in Taiwan and it’s one of the few sports events in a small island.
I’d love to say so, but I’m not sure the rest of the country would agree - AFL kind of spread outwards from Victoria, and while we’re doing a good job sucking the rest of the country in, I’m not sure if the Borg has fully assimilated them. Up north, they like rugby. Apparently it’s neck and neck
On the other hand, the claimed international audience for the Melbourne Cup is 700 million people which frankly I Can’t Even
They show a metric fuckton of commercials. At least in Pakistan.
Maybe they debut new ones…never noticed to be honest.
There’s usually a sociopolitical component. One of the biggest, called el clásico (Barça-Madrid or vice versa) involves the two biggest teams in the country and a lot of political history behind their backing.
And of course there’s commercials during the matches. There’s the ads on the field itself, there’s the band at the bottom of the screen, there’s “flies” (logos) stuck anyplace on the screen the people from Ad Sales can get away with, and commercial breaks which are as frequent as the rules of the game allow for and as long as the laws allow. Pre-game breaks try to approach eternity: ad laws are written in the form of “5’ break for every 20’ programming”, and the TV companies will just make other breaks smaller to pile up as much income in the pre-game as they possibly can. They would love to stretch the mid-game or any pre-extra time, but trying that gets raspberries from the clubs and their organizations. Oh, and the wall of ads behind people being interviewed.
“Well, that’s just Super!”
On behalf of the England supporters can I just point out that there was absolutely no need for that! 
For saying it or for doing it? 
(Spain is happy when our team manages to pass quarter-finals. Apparently we’re collectively bad at fractions, given how often we fall in quarters.)
The biggest events in Australia are the Melbourne Cup. Virtually impossible to avoid receiving coverage in all forms of media for weeks leading up to the race. Every decent size office will have one or more sweeps, people who never otherwise bet will have bets on the race and everything stops around cup time as a huge percentage of the nation stops to watch the race. It takes place on a workday outside Victoria, where it is held, so it disrupts business activity a lot.
The three State Of Origin rugby league matches between Queensland and New South Wales are among the most watched TV sporting events. They began as a one of match where teams were chosen to represent he states based on where they first played football, not where they then played. All the experts expected it to be a flop because club teammates would be playing one another and wouldn’t take it seriously. On the contrary, they are the most passionately hard fought games on the calendar. Generally players hold the games in higher regard than internationals or grand finals. They are most popular in Queensland and New South Wales.
The NRL and AFL grand finals - one off winner takes all deciders for the title - are the other major events. The NRL grand final like State Of Origin is most popular in Queensland and New South Wales. The AFL grand final is the most popular event in all the other states and is in fact the most viewed TV event each year.
In Japan, the Japan Series, the baseball championship, is quite popular, although it’s not as popular as it was historically before soccer started to gain in popularity. For a while in the 1990s, sumo had been quite popular, but again, it’s lost popularity.
Japan’s rather dismal attempts in the World Cup has had high television ratings.
Steady on there, Stafford, old chap!
I was very careful to say:
My bolding. OK, I wasn’t that careful, or there wouldn’t have been that embarrassing typo in there - but I thought I had made it clear that my response was from a specifically English perspective.
j
No worries, I was just being nitpicky about what you said about the status of the FA cup final in the UK; I think people in England might not realise that before satellite TV and different dates/times for the Scottish and English cup finals, no one in Scotland (outwith the Border TV region) watched the FA cup final. If you wanted to follow it live you would have had to listen to Radio 2.
Ah - I did also say UK - my slip. Ooops.
FWIW - I grew up watching Border TV. I could very nearly see Scotland from my bedroom window.
j
In addition to the various football finals and so mentioned by Treppenwitz and Go_Arachnid_Laser, there’s a surprising one - the Boat Race. It’s big enough to take over BBC1 for half a day and I often see people mentioning it on Facebook. Considering it’s a rowing race - a relatively minority sport - between the same two universities every year (Oxford and Cambridge) it’s amazing it gets any viewers at all really, but it seems to get decent viewing figures.
Wimbledon is also huge. The finals for the singles matches get enormous viewing figures.
No adverts, because the BBC has the rights to both the above, but I’m not sure why that makes a difference.
The FA Cup is still probably the closest answer to the Superbowl, though yup, it’s not as important as it used to be.
Sorry, didn’t want to rub it in, but only state the facts ;). During my lifetime, I saw six World Cup finals involving the German team. Three wins and three losses. But let’s not talk about the last World Cup in Russia…:o
I think the point about commercials, particularly during the Super Bowl, is that many of the ads which run on that game are being shown there for the first time ever (due to the large audience), and advertisers often use those spots to launch new campaigns, or run unusual ads.
Because of that, the ads, themselves, have become part of the event. And, there are a lot of Super Bowl viewers who say (sometimes in jest, sometimes not) “I only watch the game for the commercials.”
Japan’s national footy team has been unsuccessful, not dismal. I always enjoy watching the attacking spirit of the Samurai Blue (and captain Maya Yoshida of Southampton).
Also sometimes the halftime show but lately they have really sucked.