Talk:List of most-watched television broadcasts

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9/11 Terrorist attacks?[edit]

Why is this on the list? How is that being judged? I really don't understand the criteria here.

Is it estimating the total number of people who watched any coverage of it from any source anywhere in the world? Is there a time frame? The day of the attacks? The week? What constituted coverage? Any mention of it anywhere on television? full 24 hour coverage? Why aren't other things like that on the list? Hurricane Katrina, Pokemon Go, millennium new year.

It seems strange to have this added to the list. 9/11 was a world event, not a television broadcast.

70.71.234.123 (talk) 00:06, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

India: original-research in the section?[edit]

For a better part of the section along with data there are implications and analysis of those said data. And in no way, that data have been referenced with proper source materials and hence seems to be an original material of the contributor. Probably that needs to be looked upon, whether it is indeed against the Wikipedia policies or not. Unique1997 (talk) 10:16, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

But I would say it almost perfectly fits the picture, even thought the list old is.

Adams and Jesus, female and male man:

5 Des Mein Niklla Hoga Chand 10.0 Star Plus

Younger or smaller hackers and fleers, infected by Evas COVID-19 and converted to woman, but some possibly become almost equal guilty fascist hackers:

4 Mahabharat (1988 TV series) 22.9 DD Bharati

Older or greater hackers and fleers, infected by Evas COVID-19 and converted to woman, but some possibly become almost equal guilty fascist hackers:

2 Luv Kush (finale) 67.10 Doordarshan

The Offsping of Eva Maria and Elon Musk, Charlotte de Witte, Alex Uriel Dominican Republic and Cuba, Xenophobia Xenobot2.0 Amphipoli, Jews from Synangoge Apollonia:

3 2018 Indian Premier League Final 55.6[135] Star Network

And the Eva family older Wulfs, Raphaels, Uriels, Israfil, Maria Magdalena, Johanna, Samarita, Tax-Collector, Aholah and Aholibah, Pharisä and Baals-Queens::

1 Ramayan (1987 TV series) (Laxman vs Meghnath yudh) 77[134] Doordarshan

Eliafanie 10:35, Sat '2021-05-08 AST (UTC-4)

Global viewing figures for Rio 2016[edit]

Is the figure for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics (3.6 billion) accurate?

The IOC's GLOBAL BROADCAST AND AUDIENCE REPORT noted that the "Projected Global 1 Minute Reach" was only 3.2 billion. --Ratha K (talk) 21:03, 8 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Redundancy[edit]

In the Global section, is there any reason the List and Ranking sections shouldn't be combined? - 2603:9000:E408:4800:BC40:EE1:E9AF:4A4C (talk) 17:44, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion for Australia[edit]

Would it be possible to add another small list of programs by single network broadcasts. I know they already have a note, but it’s the only one here that counts all three networks as a single broadcast together. Because they’re all counted together, a lot of single broadcasts aren’t shown. I’m not suggesting we get rid of the current lists, but add another to see more of the other single broadcast shows. It can be somewhat unfair to count all three networks when it could be argued that they were most watched because viewers had little option of other shows on and the added bonus of several networks counted as one, as it undermines the real popularity of the broadcast. Again, no other countries here have this, so I believe this should warrant an additional list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:D548:B200:DD20:126D:84F8:49F6 (talk) 20:17, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gabriela[edit]

Se na lista de Portugal não consta o último episódio (pelo menos o último) da telenovela Gabriela, a lista está errada. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.80.214.144 (talk) 21:27, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Commonwealth Games and football Euros[edit]

I don't know what criteria are used for this page but in an attempt to counter US-centricity, I note that UEFA Euro 2016 claimed 2 billion individual viewers per AP, and that was only 100m up from UEFA Euro 2012 (same ref) so I imagine quite a few Euros will have gone over the 1 billion mark. The 2014 Commonwealth Games had 1.5 billion viewers according to the Scottish government and "over 1.5 billion" is claimed for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, but I can't find an Australian source for that, just eg this. Again I imagine quite a few of the past ones will have gone over a billion.Le Deluge (talk) 10:25, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Paralympic Games[edit]

https://www.paralympic.org/news/rio-2016-paralympics-smash-all-tv-viewing-records According to this ink by IPC,Rio 2016 Paralympics were watched by 4.1 Billion people,which would make rio 2016 Paralympics the most watch television broadcast of all time.and also the list mentions 2018 Winter Olympics while the link is actually of Paralympics, so you might also wanna update that ਬੱਬੂ ਬਰਾੜ (talk) 20:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Done: The list has been updated. Tillu Talla (talk) 12:36, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence[edit]

A number of the claimed figures on this list seem improbably high, and the sources are largely non-scholarly articles (newspapers, magazines, etc) which are just repeating a claim from ... somewhere. For instance, on 15 September 1978, Muhammad Ali vs. Leon Spinks II has a figure of "2 billion"; examining that:

  • The global population at the time was 4.3 billion
  • The reference for Larry Holmes vs. Muhammad Ali two years later claims that "for the first time in history, a boxing event was televised in Red China", so we can assume that the 950 million people then alive in China did not watch the 1978 match
  • That leaves 3.4 billion people alive worldwide, so the statistic requires the boxing match to be watched by at least 58% of all humans in the countries where it was broadcast - and that includes all ages and social circumstances, in a period where access to television was far from universal

That seems to me firmly in the realm of "extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence", and makes me suspicious that a lot of these figures were made up on the spot by those marketing the events, rather than based on solid methodology. Would anyone care to prove me wrong? - IMSoP (talk) 14:06, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the dubious entries highlighted in my previous comment, the figures on this page are not even using comparable definitions. For instance, the current global record is claimed to be 5.23 billion for the UEFA Euro 2020 tournament, but this is aggregated across the entire 51-match tournament. The reference given (self-published by UEFA without any details of methodology) clarifies that the average simultaneous viewing for the final was a mere 328 million, and the "unique reach" (presumably the number of people in the world who watched at least one of those 51 matches) as 1.9 billion.
As well as making comparisons pretty meaningless, this throws further suspicion on the claim that those figures were eclipsed by a single boxing match forty years earlier. - IMSoP (talk) 16:44, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, you're quite right, the article's been a problem for years, for the reasons you wrote, and some others. (I've been working on something similar that I'll post here.) It'll take a while to turn the "Global" section into something even remotely reliable on this topic – will probably have to happen in stages over time. There are plenty of sources on audience exaggeration that I'll add to the article soon. - Demokra (talk) 23:54, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see IMSoP has removed all the sporting events and a few other things from the Global lists. This is not an improvement. You seem to have had a standard of evidence in mind since you removed some things but not others. Could you explain it? I agree there are issues comparing multi-event competitions like the Olympics or World Cup to a single event, but deleting them all isn't the best way to deal with it.--Jahalive (talk) 20:23, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't specifically remove sporting events, I removed two categories discussed on this talk page. Rather than just talking about them and waiting for someone else to act, I decided to follow one of the oldest guidelines this site has, and Be bold.
The first category I removed is those which were not a single event, and therefore could not meaningfully be said to have a single audience. It's not at all obvious what it means for a two-week tournament to have "2 billion viewers" - is that the peak audience, the average, an estimate of distinct individuals, or perhaps an unadjusted sum of multiple daily totals? Are all the sources listed using the same definition, so that the numbers are in any way comparable?
If you think you can rescue a meaningful comparison, perhaps it could be a separate list, with a clear explanation of what it's actually showing. Some of the sources for the deleted entries might be useful; if so, they are easy to find in the edit history.
To be included in the main list, they would need to be a single broadcast - the final of a football tournament, or the opening ceremony of the Olympics, for instance.
The other category I removed entirely were those relating to boxing, mostly regarding Mohammed Ali, since I have found no reliable reference for these figures, and as discussed above common sense and arithmetic make them highly unlikely.
If there are any entries in particular you think I removed in error, you can of course add them back. Do check that they are actually backed up by reliable independent sources, though. - IMSoP (talk) 22:38, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Worst article on Wikipedia (2021 version)[edit]

Hi,

The "Global" list in its current state has no encyclopedic standard, has huge problems with invented audience figures, and is itself a source of misinformation. Editors also wilfully confused single broadcasts with multiple broadcasts or series (which are not even eligible for the page), and many exaggerated numbers were quoted, originating from event promoters, with no basis in reality. Since the British Empire article lost its 'featured' status and some of its racist outlook, this section may now be the worst and most misleading part of Wikipedia.

checkY There are some good aspects:

  • The "National" sections are correctly using data from independent sources that measure television ratings (Nielsen, TAM, BARB, GfK, etc), for the most part. The countries' lists may not be complete or may lack some large broadcasts from the past, and are always approximate in any case. But they're on the right path to giving a reliable overview.
  • "National" sections follow a common pattern: single-event or single-episode broadcasts. (No series or two-week events, because they aren't comparable.)
  • "National" sections mainly use the average audience that watched the full broadcast, which is AFAIK the gold standard in measuring a broadcast's viewership fairly. (Not "peak" or "cumulative" audience.)


☒N On the less good side:

  • Failure by some editors to understand how TV ratings work, and basic failings in logic
  • Unhealthy focus on uncited "world records" and outdoing other editors
  • WP:RECENTISM and WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims – not only has this article claimed "world record" broadcasts that are not listed as records in any source, but also, users have exacerbated the problem by copying press releases (self-promotional and unreliable material). Users also conflated "whole tournament" broadcasts with single matches. Just really basic, fundamental errors.
  • Disorganized news coverage (Gulf War, 9/11) may be very important, but cannot be classed as "a broadcast" in the sense that this section requires. As Anon wrote above, the news coverage is too unfocused to be reduced to a reliable global audience figure – different world broadcasters covered these events with different video/film, at different times, in different timeslots, with different reporters and presenters seen throughout. If (in line with other events) an average audience were calculated, it would be relatively low due to the sheer length of coverage.
  • Just as we wouldn't often rely on a cookery writer as a source in a sports article, or vice versa, it's unwise to rely on non-television specialist authors or journalists here without extra verification. Journalists very often quote TV ratings that are wrong or misleading.
  • Many sources here cannot be seen as reliable, in that the numbers the writer quotes are second-hand, hearsay, or not independently measured.
  • Clearly there's been some POV editing and wishful thinking by fans of particular events – this is forgivable, as the false numbers appear in published media often, but Wikipedia has to take a more rigorous and analytical approach.


Audience figures given by FIFA, the IOC and others were shown in 2007 by The Independent and Sporting Futures to be widely inflated by 400% or much more, misleading the public and sponsors. This was acknowledged at the time and FIFA pledged to be more accurate, but as you may have noticed, the same tendencies returned soon after.

Unrealistic numbers are quite easy to debunk, because most major nations have independent agencies to measure national viewership, but AFAIK there isn't an international ratings body, nor are the national figures often combined in any reliable "global" TV viewership report. Nobody provides a counter to the inflated figures.

For example, an internal Tour de France paper claimed a figure of "1.98 billion" watching its event, but 73% of that was the estimated audience to see it in news or magazine reports (i.e. on other programs), and the actual live audience (309 million) was added together from every stage of the race. The real audience was only about 15 million a day. (Dr Daam Van Reeth, pp17-23) Tour organizer ASO went further and claimed that 5 billion people watched it...

There's a fairly persuasive argument that the 2008 Olympic opening was the first event to get close to 1 billion viewers (c970 million, IIRC, measured independently), but even that is the cumulative audience, not average, which was lower. The Beijing ceremony was a major world sport (and news) event, held in primetime in the world's largest country, planned for years, broadcast in most of the world, and an important event for China – a combination of factors that no other broadcast has had.

For the record, these were this List's erroneous "top five broadcasts" as of 2021 (a measure of how badly the article has gone wrong). They need to be edited with a scythe, like the rest of the section, and I'll be happy to do that.

   — Television broadcasts that held the viewership record
List of the most-watched television broadcasts of all time
Date(s) Television broadcast(s) Estimated audience (billions) Source(s) Content
11 June to 11 July 2021 UEFA Euro 2020 5.23 [1] Association football
7 September 2016 to 18 September 2016 Rio 2016 Summer Paralympics 4.1 [2] Olympic sports
27 July 2012 to 12 August 2012 London 2012 Summer Olympics 3.6 [3] Olympic sports
5 August 2016 to 21 August 2016 Rio 2016 Summer Olympics [4]
14 June 2018 to 15 July 2018 Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup 3.572 [5][6] Association football
  • Euro 2020: Not a broadcast, a series of broadcasts, not eligible for these lists. Comes from a self-interested source, which clearly states these are "cumulative" (i.e. inflated) audiences, and even UEFA accepts that no match got more than 328 million viewers. A continental event, not a world one, and this should have been considered before posting.
  • 2016 Paralympics: Not a broadcast, a series of broadcasts, not eligible for lists. Self-interested source, and clearly unrealistic figures, regardless of the merits of this event and its positive impact on sports and society – 2016 Summer Paralympics#Broadcasting shows that the Games were broadcast sporadically, if at all, and chiefly on secondary TV channels or websites. From actual ratings, even the best Paralympic coverage had relatively low audiences in the U.S. (651,000 at most, NBC) and UK (2m peak, Channel 4).
  • Summer Olympics/FIFA World Cup: Again, the lists aren't for month-long series of multiple broadcasts. The sourcing is poor or self-promotional. A single event from these could qualify e.g. opening ceremony / final, but may also be subject to exaggeration or misleading numbers.


More than half of the 'Global' section has had problems or is irrelevant to the topic. A few bogus figures can be easily disproven in the internet era, when more accurate national figures are widely available through contemporary reports. For pre-internet events, this may be more difficult.

  • Michael Jackson: The 2009 memorial service was seen by less than a tenth of the population in the United States (31 million) and United Kingdom (6 million), countries where interest was highest. In Asia it was broadcast overnight, hence much lower potential ratings. Unexplained "estimates" put the audience at 1 billion, or later, 2.5 billion in the source here. Usually Wikipedia would question a disparity of 1.5 billion or 2 billion, you would think...
  • Baywatch: "2 September 1989 to 26 February 2001"... Must've been a long episode. Regardless of the (non)-veracity of the "1.1 billion" audience over 12 years, this article's purpose is not to measure ratings for a full TV series – and certainly not by adding up multiple TV shows, e.g. the dreaded Idols, which has a paragraph in the overlong 'Global' section with no relevance to it.
  • Cricket: Often has outlandish claims of billions of viewers – when the total population of every Test cricket-playing country is 1.5 billion – of which 1 billion are in India. An exceptionally high average audience for a game on TV in India was 135 million (CWC Final, 2011).
  • Muhammad Ali: Figures of 1-2 billion are often repeated, but utterly unrealistic – boxing is a famously self-promotional sport. As well as the issues raised by IMSoP above, the Manila article says 100 million Americans saw the bout on closed-circuit theatre television(!) ...citing a kickboxing magazine. Ali's fights were staged for primetime in the USA/Americas, ensuring lower audiences in four-fifths of the world; Rumble in the Jungle began at 4am local time; Thrilla in Manila at 10am. "When people make historic claims about any TV audience prior to the 1980s, they often forget that virtually nobody in Asia owned a TV before then (one in a hundred households in China in the late 1970s for example, fewer in India, and that’s almost half the planet’s population in two countries)." [1] Klitschko audiences definitely didn't belong in a Global section: even with exaggeration, they weren't large enough for this list. Per Wikipedia lists of TV coverage of his fights, promoters essentially claimed that over half the population of Europe watched an event shown mainly on PPV or minor cable channels.

Others: These were other multiple-broadcasts / tournaments / series in the list as of 2021, which shouldn't have been added. (They may have had millions of viewers, but they weren't eligible for the list anyway.) Sourcing is also usually incredibly lax.

List of the most-watched television broadcasts of all time
Date(s) Television broadcast(s) Estimated audience (billions) Source(s) Content
11 June to 11 July 2021 UEFA Euro 2020 5.23 [1] Association football
7 September 2016 to 18 September 2016 Rio 2016 Summer Paralympics 4.1 [7] Olympic sports
27 July 2012 to 12 August 2012 London 2012 Summer Olympics 3.6 [3] Olympic sports
5 August 2016 to 21 August 2016 Rio 2016 Summer Olympics [4]
14 June 2018 to 15 July 2018 Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup 3.572 [8][9] Association football
8 August 2008 to 24 August 2008 Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics 3.51 [3][10] Olympic sports
19 July 1996 to 4 August 1996 Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics 3.5 [11][12]
15 September 2000 to 1 October 2000 Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics [13]
13 August 2004 to 29 August 2004 Athens 2004 Summer Olympics [14]
10 June 1998 to 12 July 1998 France 1998 FIFA World Cup 3.4 [15][16] Association football
11 June 2010 to 11 July 2010 South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup 3.2 [17]
12 June 2014 to 13 July 2014 Brazil 2014 FIFA World Cup [18]
23 July 2021 to 8 August 2021 Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics 3.05 [19] Olympic sports
31 May 2002 to 30 June 2002 2002 FIFA World Cup (Korea & Japan) 3 [20][21] Association football
9 June 2006 to 9 July 2006 Germany 2006 FIFA World Cup [22][23]
30 May 2019 to 14 July 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 2.6 [24] Cricket
8 February 2002 to 24 February 2002 Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics 2.1 [25] Winter sports
10 February 2006 to 26 February 2006 Torino 2006 Winter Olympics [26]
12 February 2010 to 28 February 2010 Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics [26]
7 February 2014 to 23 February 2014 Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics [4]
9 February 2018 to 25 February 2018 PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics 2.02 [27]
19 July 1980 to 3 August 1980 Moscow 1980 Summer Olympics 2 [28] Olympic sports
28 July 1984 to 12 August 1984 Los Angeles 1984 Summer Olympics [29][30] Olympic sports
17 September 1988 to 2 October 1988 Seoul 1988 Summer Olympics [31]
25 July 1992 to 9 August 1992 Barcelona 1992 Summer Olympics [32][33]
10 June to 10 July 2016 France UEFA Euro 2016 [34] Association football
17 July 1976 to 1 August 1976 Montreal 1976 Summer Olympics 1.5 [35] Olympic sports
7 June 2019 to 7 July 2019 France 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup 1.12 [36] Association Football
8 June 1990 to 8 July 1990 1990 FIFA World Cup Italia 1 [37] Association football
2 August 1990 to 28 February 1991 Gulf War [38] Military conflict
17 June 1994 to 17 July 1994 1994 FIFA World Cup USA [39] Association football
27 June 2016 to 7 July 2016 2016 Wimbledon Championships [40] Tennis
  1. ^ a b "UEFA EURO 2020 impresses with 5.2 billion cumulative global live audience". UEFA. 2 September 2021.
  2. ^ "Rio 2016 Paralympics smash all TV viewing records". International Paralympic Committee. 16 Mar 2017. Retrieved 30 Aug 2021.
  3. ^ a b c London 2012 Olympic Games: Global Broadcast Report (PDF). International Olympic Committee. December 2012.
  4. ^ a b c "Olympic Games: TV viewership worldwide 2016". Statista. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  5. ^ "More than Half the World Watched Record-Breaking 2018 World Cup" (21 December 2018). FIFA.com. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  6. ^ "In Pictures: Highlights of the France-Croatia World Cup final". The Straits Times. 16 July 2018.
  7. ^ "Rio 2016 Paralympics smash all TV viewing records". International Paralympic Committee. 16 Mar 2017. Retrieved 30 Aug 2021.
  8. ^ "More than Half the World Watched Record-Breaking 2018 World Cup" (21 December 2018). FIFA.com. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  9. ^ "In Pictures: Highlights of the France-Croatia World Cup final". The Straits Times. 16 July 2018.
  10. ^ Stone, Mark (11 August 2008). "Parts of the spectacular Beijing Olympics opening ceremony were faked, it has emerged". Sky News. Sky.com. Archived from the original on 10 April 2009. Retrieved 11 August 2008.
  11. ^ "Atlanta Olympics: By The Numbers". Sports Business Daily. Advance Publications. 18 July 2016.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hajeski was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Stavroulakis, Peter (2003). Reliability, Survivability and Quality of Large Scale Telecommunication Systems: Case Study: Olympic Games. John Wiley & Sons. p. 323. ISBN 9780470859308.
  14. ^ Ritzer, George (2008). The Blackwell Companion to Globalization. John Wiley & Sons. p. 487. ISBN 9780470766422.
  15. ^ Kotabe, Masaaki; Helsen, Kristiaan (2004). Global marketing management. Wiley. p. 446. ISBN 9780471230625. The 1998 World Cup drew 3.4 billion viewers
  16. ^ "History: France, 1998". ABC News. 15 May 2014.
  17. ^ "Almost half the world tuned in at home to watch 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™". FIFA. 11 July 2011. Archived from the original on 18 May 2018.
  18. ^ "2014 FIFA World Cup™ reached 3.2 billion viewers, one billion watched final". FIFA.com. 16 December 2015. Archived from the original on 19 December 2015.
  19. ^ "Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 watched by more than 3 billion people". International Olympic Committee. 8 Dec 2021. Retrieved 28 Dec 2021.
  20. ^ Brower, Daniel R. (2005). The World Since 1945: A Brief History. Prentice Hall. p. 237. ISBN 9780131897052. An estimated three billion viewers watched the 2002 World Soccer Cup matches.
  21. ^ Luxbacher, Joe (2005). Soccer: Steps to Success. Human Kinetics. p. vi. ISBN 9780736054355.
  22. ^ "Infographic: Billions of Dollars for Billions of Viewers". Statista Infographics. 21 June 2018. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  23. ^ Tom Dunmore, Historical Dictionary of Soccer, page 235, quote "The World Cup is now the most-watched sporting event in the world on television, above even the Olympic Games."
  24. ^ "ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2019 shatters audience records". International Cricket Council. 12 July 2019. Archived from the original on 15 July 2019. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  25. ^ "Infographic: 100 YEARS OF OLYMPIC MARKETING". olympic.org. Retrieved 4 June 2019. Viewing figures showed that 2.1 billion people in 160 countries consumed more than 13 billion Television Viewer Hours (TVH).
  26. ^ a b Wenner, Lawrence A.; Billings, Andrew C. (2017). Sport, Media and Mega-Events. Taylor & Francis. p. 81. ISBN 9781317397441.
  27. ^ "Record international audiences for PyeongChang 2018". International Paralympic Committee. 6 April 2018.
  28. ^ Dvinskiĭ, Ėmmanuil (1981). Moscow and its environs: a guide. Progress Publishers. p. 277. ISBN 9780714717371. Altogether the Moscow Olympics were watched by some 2 billion viewers throughout the world.
  29. ^ Darch, Craig (2014). From Brooklyn to the Olympics: The Hall of Fame Career of Auburn University Track Coach Mel Rosen. NewSouth Books. p. 145. ISBN 9781603063463.
  30. ^ Llewellyn, Matthew; Gleaves, John; Wilson, Wayne (2017). The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games: Assessing the 30-Year Legacy. Routledge. p. 181. ISBN 9781317502463.
  31. ^ Levinson, David; Christensen, Karen (1999). Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present. Oxford University Press. p. 110. ISBN 9780195131956.
  32. ^ Time Annual 1992: The Year in Review. Time Incorporated. 1993. p. 163. ISBN 9780848711566. Two billion viewers around the world found new pleasures in a ritual that is more ancient than most religions: men and women from every nation gathering in peace to surpass themselves.
  33. ^ "Badminton in the Olympics". The Washington Post. Retrieved 17 August 2018. Badminton's worldwide popularity was proven during the 1992 Olympics, when an estimated 1.1. billion viewers around the globe watched the eight-day inaugural badminton competition on television.
  34. ^ "Uefa details Euro 2016 viewing figures". SportBusiness Media. 16 December 2016.
  35. ^ Telecommunications. Horizon House. 1979. p. 240. The TV programs from the 1976 Olympics in Montreal were watched by 1.5 billion viewers and the Moscow Olympics in 1980, according to expert estimates, will have a TV audience of over 2 billion on all five continents.
  36. ^ "FIFA Women's World Cup 2019 watched by more than 1 billion". 18 October 2019.
  37. ^ HERBERT, STEVEN (10 July 1990). "World Cup '90 : '94 World Cup Scoring Low With Networks : Soccer: The three major networks are cool to the upcoming contest, so U.S. cable may get the whole show". Los Angeles Times.
  38. ^ Gallagher, Thomas (2017). The American Presidency and Entertainment Media: How Technology Affects Political Communication. Lexington Books. p. 46. ISBN 9781498549882.
  39. ^ IT & Telecom Digest. Belmang Limited. 2004. p. 138. In USA 1994, about 1 billion viewers watched the soccer festival
  40. ^ Jenkins, Tom; Fidler, Matt; Jenkins, Tom; Fidler, Matt (7 July 2016). "Inside the BBC at Wimbledon – a photo essay". The Guardian.


Advice to all editors:

  • Find the most reliable numbers, not the highest claimed numbers.
  • Single broadcasts are the focus of the article, as you can see in every "National" section.
    • For the world list, in particular, by its nature it is limited to certain types of events: e.g., sports matches, ceremonies, live TV events (if simulcast internationally), concerts (if simulcast internationally); also, organized news events such as weddings, funerals, and press conferences would qualify. The latter can rate very highly on a national level, due to their brief length and national importance, e.g. Macron's announcements in France in 2020; see the "France" list.
  • "Tournament total" audiences are not appropriate to list here, nor are multi-week audiences (not comparable with a one-off broadcast), though they might be of interest in the relevant tournament or TV series article.
  • Stop competing with each other – it doesn't improve the article.

- Demokra (talk) 00:07, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

then take out Diana’s funeral too, because if not 2.5 billion people didn’t watch Michael Jackson’s funeral then I’m sure 2 billion people didn’t watch Diana’s funeral neither. It’s kinda being hypocritical. Mypthegoat (talk) 11:45, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree. Keep both or remove both, but it is necessary to proceed on an equality criteria. 62.42.66.79 (talk) 01:33, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

history[edit]

Without a history section, such as the top broadcast per year, incredible viewerships such as an Ed Sullivan broadcast, are not present. Kdammers (talk) 14:14, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You'll find The Ed Sullivan Show on this list: List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States--Jahalive (talk) 19:36, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Combining two Global lists[edit]

Demokra combined the all-time global list with a list that was attempting to show the progression over time of the most watched broadcasts. I think they should stay separate.--Jahalive (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Let's get the 'List' section in order first – recent deletions by another editor may have seemed harsh to you, but that 'Global' section was (and still is) more nonsense than sense. Few or none of the "world records" were even cited as such, and with no global ratings body they're hard to ascertain, and editors were just posting events indiscriminately. I was going to remove the most questionable stuff more gradually than IMSoP did, and am planning to add as much as I can later ... but basically, the article needs people to cut through the untruths and IMSoP was right to do it. It's crazy how much of the article in 2021 was made up – by promoters, not our editors – but it was, and someone had to rip off the band-aid (not the Live Aid!). Wikipedia isn't home to misinformation.
I have several things I'd like to add, background info, including on Fifa's admission of inflating the numbers, and to add some known high-rated events like World Cup finals, Olympic ceremonies, etc. But it'll take some time, and let's say, this article isn't my main priority. Demokra (talk) 22:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I must say, I didn't really understand the difference between the two lists. What criteria are there for including on this list, other than that it was a record at the time? If the 2018 Winter Olympics received fewer viewers than the 2014 Winter Olympics, why bother listing both? The previous version looks like perhaps "anything over 1 billion", but doesn't actually say so, or give any reason for that cut-off. A table of the current top 10 might be more interesting, if good enough sources could be found to maintain it. - IMSoP (talk) 11:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like you understand the two criteria perfectly. The global list included everything that was reported to have a billion or more viewers. The list of records is broadcasts that were a record at the time. The 2018 and 2014 Olympics were reported to have over 1 billion so they were on the global list. Neither were on the list of records. Assuming we can find good sources, we shouldn't limit the current list to a top 10.--Jahalive (talk) 19:57, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jahalive Sorry for the late reply, but... Who decided that 1 billion was the cut-off? When? Why did they not say so anywhere? Is there a similar secret rule for how the list was able to compare weddings, news stories, multi-week sports tournaments, and a television drama which ran for 12 years?
More importantly, is that a useful cut-off? Given that the global population has doubled since the 1970s, and television access has expanded massively as well, any fixed cut-off will lead to a huge bias for later events; a percentage cut-off, quota per decade, etc, would be more useful. And that's before you get to the problem that it's disputed whether any single broadcast has had 1 billion viewers. - IMSoP (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Are any of the global totals real?[edit]

Demokra covered a lot of issues in the § Worst article on Wikipedia (2021 version) section, but the most important one (to me anyway) is how many of these numbers probably have no basis in reality and are completely made up.

The articles by Nick Harris from Sportingintelligence linked to in that section are pretty convincing. From his research:

  • The most-watched event in history (at least when he wrote the article in 2011) was the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing with an audience of 1 billion (or 593 million if you use average audience)
  • The 2011 Cricket World Cup final between India and Sri Lanka had an audience of no more than 400 million (and I would argue much less)
  • The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was watched by 300 million

And his estimates of 100 million for the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and 250 million for Princess Diana's funeral look much more realistic than the numbers in the global table.

He writes: "Many of the supposedly “most watched” events in history have been attributed viewing figures that were simply made up. And these numbers are passed down as fact, unquestioned." I now have no confidence that any of the numbers in the table are accurate.--Jahalive (talk) 19:39, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is more useful than the article! Dan100 (Talk) 18:33, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No World Cup finals on the global list?[edit]

According to FIFA, practically every world cup final breaks 500 million concurrent and 1 billion at some point, and considering football’s global reach, this is completely conceivable. AndrewKkh (talk) 10:29, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

They should be on the list although there is some question about the accuracy of FIFA's numbers in the #Worst article on Wikipedia (2021 version) section. The article Sincere good wishes to Wills and Kate, but a 2bn TV audience? Garbage. Only the Olympics and the World Cup are truly global events, and half as big as that at best gives some independent analysis of the numbers.--Jahalive (talk) 23:10, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this article should be deleted?[edit]

The point of Wikipedia is that it should be a source of factual information, right? If there’s such concern about the sources/references used here and if there’s truly no way to have accurate information about viewership of each event and whatnot, then maybe this article should be deleted. To me, this clearly doesn’t meet Wikipedia standards if it’s loaded with potentially false information. I should note that I have no intentions of trying to delete this article or even officially nominating this article for deletion - not going to open that powder keg! Howeve, it feels common sense to me that this article should be deleted and/or significantly revised. Dym75 (talk) 13:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Queen's funeral[edit]

We need to add it here well over 2 billion MAY have watched it so we need to confirm numbers then add it. 81.109.48.40 (talk) 11:34, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The key part of that sentence is "confirm numbers". That means waiting for official agencies to publish their figures, and for someone to collate those into a reputable worldwide total. We can't write an encyclopedia about things that may be true. - IMSoP (talk) 18:10, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The current most watched broacast is supported by an article from Billboard that clearly says estimate. None of these numbers are even close to accurate. 216.183.148.107 (talk) 00:05, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Peak viewership[edit]

There was a recent edit to the lead that changed the definition of this list. The long-standing wording said the list contains "peak viewership (or ratings share) records". The edit removes the word "peak". This change is not consistent with how the list has been built. I think the list should focus on peak viewership records.--Jahalive (talk) 20:33, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"The list" was built on a mountain of lies, Jah. It has no place in an encyclopedia.
The more competent lists (national ones) usually don't favor the peak audience figure because it's unrepresentative - the professionals try to find the audience of the whole broadcast as their priority. In any case, the peak for a broadcast across dozens of countries/timezones/methodologies might be impossible to find out. - Demokra (talk) 08:51, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ratings agencies track peak audiences as well as average. Marketing professionals are interested in average audiences because that’s the basis they use to sell ads. General interest sources are usually more interested in the peak or cumulative numbers. I think the peak audience numbers are more easily available.--Jahalive (talk) 09:34, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Delete Global section, permanently[edit]

To quote WP:LISTCRITERIA:

The Global section of this article seems to fail on all counts: the criteria are unclear, and do not seem to be based on any external standard; they synthesise statistics from a number of unreliable sources, in such a way that the list itself is essentially original research. None of the discussions above seem to have reached a conclusion as to how this can be remedied.

I therefore propose the following:

  • Delete the entire "Global" section. The remaining sections of the article are, for the most part, much more clearly in line with the guideline quoted above.
  • Remove the "National" top-level heading, promoting the headings below it.
  • Reword the lead as follows:

That could possibly be expanded with a discussion of the types of program which receive global audiences - sports events, historical events, concerts - but should be very wary of including too many examples, and certainly no viewing figures, so that we don't invite a global list back in "by the back door".

What does anyone think? - IMSoP (talk) 21:18, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Given the lack of explicit objections, and having read FIFA already predicting a ludicrous 5 billion figure for the Qatar World Cup, I've decided to Be Bold and make this drastic cut. I apologise to those who had put effort into the previous text, but I haven't seen any convincing alternative solution to the large number of issues with that section. - IMSoP (talk) 14:55, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...And you made the right choice. —theMainLogan (talk) 09:41, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

AfD Merge[edit]

I am completing the merge for this discussion. Please take a moment to review my changes in the Most watched television interviews section, and let me know if I made any mistakes. Thanks. Deauthorized. (talk) 10:42, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Most views[edit]

As the space broadcast happened with roughly half of the population of today should the list be sorted as a percentage of people who viewed it for it's respective country or the world in the case the space broadcast? 68.48.113.58 (talk) 17:55, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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