Most watched sporting events

Recently, we have had the Super bowl in America, which the Baltimore Ravens won. While everyone was talking about this show piece, I overheard that the Super bowl was one of the most watched sporting events of the world. I also knew from last year when India played Pakistan in the ICC World Cricket Cup, I heard one stat from SKY, that a total of 1 billion people were expected to watch this event. This then got me thinking, what is the most sporting event?, I have also been told that the Champions League is right up there, but with no official number of spectators. Therefore I decided I would investigate the top 5 most watched sporting events of 2012 – Yes, currently we are in 2013, however by choosing last year we can include more sporting events into the list of 5.

Without further adieu, here are the top 5 most watched sporting events of 2012 in order:

# Date Sport/Event Game/Race Net Rating Viewers
1 Sun., 2/5/12 NFL: Super Bowl Giants/Patriots NBC 47.0 111.3M
2 Sun., 1/22/12 NFL: NFC Champ. Giants/Niners FOX 30.6 57.6M
3 Sun., 1/22/12 NFL: AFC Champ. Ravens/Patriots CBS 27.4 48.7M
4 Sun., 1/15/12 NFL: NFC Divisional Giants/Packers FOX 25.3 45.1M
5 Sun., 1/8/12 NFL: AFC Wild Card Steelers/Broncos CBS 24.0 42.4M

Courtesy of http://www.sportsmediawatch.com

As we can see this was quite a shock to find out. Not only was last year dominated by NFL action, but, the London Olympics weren’t in the top 5. It was next on the list; however, this is the list for the top 5 – not the whole list. However, we can understand why NFL is holding onto these spots. The simple reason that America is a much more populated country that some, therefore NFL is right up there because of its popularity in USA. But we shouldn’t rule of the possibility that people do prefer to watch NFL instead of Football, Cricket and Rugby for example.

Rajpal Chana