3 Billion Eyes to View World Cup Opener
If you are swiveling around in your computer chair distractedly waiting for Friday’s games you are not alone. An estimated 1.5 billion people are expected to view Germany’s match against Costa Rica. That’s more than 20% of the world’s population tuning in just for a game that isn’t really one of the marquee matches in the opening round.
To put the number 1,500,000,000 into perspective, consider this. If all 1.3 billion people in China watch the game that still means another 200 million elsewhere will tune in to see Michael Ballack sitting on the bench with an injury.
One and a half billion people is also 3 times the total population of the European Union and 5 times the population of the United States.
The Costa Rica players will be interested to know that the viewing audience is more than 333 times larger than their country’s total population. Thing their knees will be knocking when they are led out onto the field?
Hell, I’m nervous just thinking about the game and all I have to do is sit back and watch along with 1.5 billion of my closest friends.
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Comments
By savio dsilva | June 8th, 2006 at 12:01 pm 
Great article. Keep it up. Visit enoma.com for the best daily match predictions in the world.
Posted from 
India
By Steffen | June 8th, 2006 at 12:27 pm That number is bollocks though. Nothing is subject to more exaggeration than worldwide viewership figures of big events. If you believed the hype, you would have to believe that half the world’s population tunes in to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics every four years, while the other half sleeps, eats, spends time outside, or does other things that don’t involve watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Or that one out of six Europeans stays up into the wee hours of the morning every year to watch the Super Bowl, not to mention people in Asia who are already at work. Point is, there’s precious little evidence to back up those astronomic figures. And they don’t pass the smell test either, unless you really believe that a few hundred million Chinese plan to get up at 2 in the morning to watch the game, and that Indians will suddenly turn into big football nuts.
I have no idea how many people will actually watch, but if you take the 28.8 billion figure published by Fifa for the 2002 games as a reasonable estimation , 500-600 million seems like a good guess to me.
Posted from 
Germany
By Rolf | June 8th, 2006 at 5:00 pm That’s also 1,499,972 more people than in my cell phone address book.
Posted from Germany
By Hermes | June 8th, 2006 at 6:13 pm The 1.5 million that tuned in to Bob having an earplug removed was pretty astonishing too! keep up the good work.
Posted from 
United States
By Stumbling Around Germany | June 9th, 2006 at 10:09 am [...] Unbelievably, the World Cup is only hours away from kicking off and I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s the biggest sporting event I can remember and even if one isn’t a football fan, the notion of fans from so many different countries getting together is fairly amazing. This year’s field is quite wide open, so it’s hard to pick a winner, but that sort of thing isn’t what this blog is about. This is where six friends will detail a month of excess and shenanigans in Germany. [...]
Posted from United States
By Ali Siddiqui | June 9th, 2006 at 11:07 am Savio seems to forget that most of those who are going to watch are die hard footie fans from countries where Football is the national sport and follow the World Cup almost religiously. Everyone in my flat here in University are going to watch the matches simply to enjoy the beautiful game.
Besides, who cares about the Olympics? :p
Posted from 
Canada
By seth | June 9th, 2006 at 11:52 am got that right…who cares about the oluympics?! i have to tell u this now, the czech republic are gonna win it! hopefully
By Steve | June 9th, 2006 at 4:13 pm i beleive that 1.5 Billion people will watch it even maybe more, anybody who says otherwise must be American and is too concerend with their own north american football witch i till this day don’t know why they call it that, only one person actually gets to kick the ball 2,3,4,5 times per game one per team only LOL LOL LOL and they call it FOOTball STUPID
By devilsoulblack | June 10th, 2006 at 3:45 am 
Posted from 
Ecuador
By Bas | June 19th, 2006 at 4:25 pm Wow! Can you say how many people watch the game per country? India, China, England, Brazil, Japan will be the most watching countries i guess? Maybe USA, Russia?
http://www.worldcupcountries.vze.com
Posted from 
Netherlands
By talent | June 22nd, 2006 at 1:09 pm w le fiche che guardano i mondiali allo stadio
Posted from 
Italy
By matt | July 9th, 2006 at 8:55 pm 1.5 billion people watching the world cup ????????? is that realistic?????
Posted from United States
By Antonio | August 14th, 2006 at 8:20 pm Not an exagerration… Just leave your country, visit Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and most of Asia during that month and you are more than likely going to stumble across someone who saw a game at least once.
Posted from 
Philippines
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