What was the most watched live event ever?

[Annie-Xmas]

The most watched unexpected event would have to be the plane hitting the second tower.

[Dewey_Finn]

Again, the OP was clearly interested in events watched by people in person, not on television.

[Martin_Hyde]

Murky, really. Just like with the TV aspect, live event is hard to pin down.

Do we mean a type of specifically spectator event? Well, that puts large religious gatherings out, but Wiki suggests those are the largest peaceful gatherings of all time of persons in one place.

Do we count parade style events like major funeral processions or ordinary parades? If so they trump the TdF–several funerals have had over 3m persons watching on the parade route (Nasser’s funeral in Egypt had 5m.) The TdF might win in the narrow category of “parade style sporting events”, but you’d have to compare it to some really popular marathons.

Do we mean persons gathered in a single venue?

[Si_Amigo]

@Martin_Hyde

I don’t really see the entire World Cup as one event.

The Apollo moon landings were extremely watched in terms of percentages of persons with television. I believe essentially every place on earth that had television broadcasts aside from the countries behind the Iron Curtain were showing it live, and I don’t believe much if anything else was even being offered to view. So essentially if you weren’t under the Soviet thumb, had a television, and it was on during the moon landings that is what you were watching.

But television adoption was in its meteoric phase during this time, there were vastly more global television sets deployed in 1980 than 1969. In 2014 just about anywhere has some level of television exposure, that may not mean a television in a home, but it does mean places people can go to watch TV, even in very poor countries. This wasn’t really the case in 1969.

Viewers or people. Because many of those alien civilizations are just now getting it and it appears live to them. Trillions and Trillions of viewers.

[Some_Call_Me.Tim]

@Martin_Hyde

I don’t really see the entire World Cup as one event.

The Apollo moon landings were extremely watched in terms of percentages of persons with television. I believe essentially every place on earth that had television broadcasts aside from the countries behind the Iron Curtain were showing it live, and I don’t believe much if anything else was even being offered to view. So essentially if you weren’t under the Soviet thumb, had a television, and it was on during the moon landings that is what you were watching.

But television adoption was in its meteoric phase during this time, there were vastly more global television sets deployed in 1980 than 1969. In 2014 just about anywhere has some level of television exposure, that may not mean a television in a home, but it does mean places people can go to watch TV, even in very poor countries. This wasn’t really the case in 1969.

Heck, even that qualifier is a bit much. I was somewhat surprised to learn in a conversation with someone who grew up in East Germany that he had watched the moon landings at the time, as they were able to pick up West German station(s). I’m not sure where he was in East Germany at the time.

[AK84]

The first moon walk had literally just a single person watching it in person.

[BobLibDem]

How about funeral processions? Maybe Kim Jong Il’s or JFK’s. Or the Red Square parades of old.

[Malden_Capell]

Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II?

The Announcement of the selection of Pope Francis looked pretty well-attended…

[Telemark]

@BobLibDem

How about funeral processions? Maybe Kim Jong Il’s or JFK’s. Or the Red Square parades of old.

Ayatolla Khomeini’s funeral had somewhere between 5 and 9 million attendees. I don’t know how many could actually see the casket but it’s a likely candidate for biggest crowd ever assembled for a single event.

[APB]

@Dahu

I’ve been watching the first couple of stages of the Tour de France which have been held in England (Yorkshire). They had around 2.5 million people over the two days.

So this would be at least 1.25 million people actually there watching a live one-day sporting event. Could this be a record for a live event, sporting or otherwise?

It’s not even obvious that this is a record for the Tour de France. Estimates for those attending the final day regularly top 1 million. Which if you’ve ever been in central Paris then is believable. In fact, it may not even be the record for the Tour de France in England - estimates from 1994 were as high as 3 million over two days (see p. 7 of this report).

[Dewey_Finn]

BTW, you might remember that in 1995, Louis Farrakhan organized the “Million Man March” of African-American men. The National Park Service estimated that there were about 400,000 attendees but Farrakhan thought this estimate was low. In the days after, there were multiple articles in the papers about various techniques for estimating the size of a crowd. Essentially, it’s not easy to do so accurately, even when the crowd is confined to a space like the National Mall. And of course the organizers of an event might be motivated to exaggerate the number of attendees.

The OP, on the other hand, mentioned the number of attendees lining the route of a stage of the Tour de France. I imagine that estimating that crowd size is got to be harder, given that the crowd is spread over many miles and the people are coming and going throughout the event.

[Kent_Clark]

@Dewey_Finn

Again, the OP was clearly interested in events watched by people in person, not on television.

Would we count everyone in the Tri-State area who watched the pillar of smoke on 9/11?

[Buck_Godot]

Again depending on your definition of event, but you might go with the 2004 Tsunami. It was experienced by basically every coastal city on the Indian ocean.

[Si_Amigo]

@kunilou

Would we count everyone in the Tri-State area who watched the pillar of smoke on 9/11?

Or the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blast?

[Fear_Itself]

The New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade draws over 2 million spectators:

With a population of over eight million people, it is not surprising that New York City hosts America’s largest of parades on Saint Patrick’s Day. The city has been throwing the parade since 1762 which is the second oldest behind only Boston. The parade is attended annually by over two million people making it by far the biggest parade in the country for St. Patrick’s Day and boasts 250,000 marchers every year up Fifth Avenue.

[Lamar_Mundane]

Obama’s first inauguration had 1.8M attendees, and that was in one place (Washington Mall), not spead out over a parade route or a marathon course.

Cite

[Dahu]

To clarify I wasn’t meaning watched on tv. I think I actually meant to ask for the greatest number attending a sporting event, but missed out the word “sport”(!).

Some good answers here though. The one that really made me sit up was the 3.5 million on Copacabana watching Rod Stewart (his wiki page actually says 4.2 million).

[Xema]

@Dahu

To clarify I wasn’t meaning watched on tv.

Well, you used the words “actually there watching a live one-day sporting event” - which seems reasonably clear.

[Urbanredneck]

I’d say it was the opening of the first gulf war when the first allied air attacks went in. All over the US there were reports of everything being shut down while people were at home. Police departments reported almost no crime because even the bad people were glued to a tv.

[Zeldar]

One more nitpick: if you don’t require that they survived seeing the event there are probably dozens to hundreds of catastrophes to be considered where those who saw it happen didn’t live to describe it to others. The WWII Japan bombs as an example.

Not trying to be picky for its own sake. Honest.