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What a strange coincidence that there seems to be a strong correlation between days when big soccer games are scheduled and an increase in sick days for soccer fans. There’s actually a Dutch insurance company offering a policy to employers because they’re predicting a huge number of “sick” days used by employees during this year’s World Cup. Check this out. I looked into it and we at mental_floss LLC are not covered by this policy.
I was trying to find some numbers on how many people watch the World Cup and some estimates put the viewership for the 2002 championship match at over 1 billion! It’s hard for me to believe that more than 10% of the earth’s population tuned in (and will be tuning in again next month) but even if that number is inflated, it’s still by far the biggest sporting event in the world, with possibly 10 times the viewership of the Super Bowl.
Pop Quiz: What does FIFA, as in FIFA World Cup, stand for? Answer: Fédération Internationale de Football Association
Comments (3)
Comment
This reminds me of that old Super Bowl myth that gets constantly repeated in newspapers every January: that 1 billion people watch it, too. I’m not sure how people came to believe something so obviously absurd (there aren’t even 300 million people in the U.S., which is really the only place people watch football), although I suspect it’s a simple problem of decimals. According to my trusty friend Wikipedia, Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005 was watched by 93 million people, which may be just shy of 100,000,000 but it sure ain’t 1,000,000,000.
posted by Mary on 5-11-2006 at 5:00 am
What surprises me about that statistic is that it implies that more than five billion people are NOT going to watch the World Cup.
What’s the problem here? It is a paucity of television sets? Because I can’t believe that there are five billion people on this planet who would choose to miss the likes of Ronaldinho and Ronaldo. Watching Brazil in the World Cup is like watching Van Gogh paint, except Brazil is more exciting and more beautiful and everyone has two ears.
posted by John on 5-11-2006 at 6:42 am
I’m so excited for this World Cup. Have you guys seen the Henry ad that Nike did? The other Brazil soccer ads are pretty great too, but this one puts the widest grin on my mug.
posted by Mangesh on 5-11-2006 at 10:40 am