The Champions League Final Was Bigger Than the Superbowl in 2009

By: Daryl | February 3rd, 2010

barcelona-barca-champions-league-blaugrana1 Interesting snippet of news I spotted over at Dirty Tackle. According to the people who measure such things, 2009 was the first year that the UEFA Champions League Final attracted a larger worldwide television audience than the Superbowl.

The Champions League final between Barcelona and Man Utd drew an average audience of 109 million and a total audience (meaning everyone who saw at least some of it) of 206 million. The Pittsburgh Steelers vs Arizona Cardinals Superbowl attracted an average audience of 106 million and a total audience of 162 million.

So soccer beat football worldwide for the first time in a non-World Cup year. Maybe I’m being a bit soccer-centric here, but is anyone else surprised that this has only just happened for the first time?

I know the Superbowl is big. I know pretty much everyone in the US watches it, including people who don’t even like the sport and just want to see the new Bud Light commercial, and I know that a decent number of people outside of the US watch it. However, I would have assumed that the global appeal of soccer vs the more America-centred appeal of the NFL would have seen the Champions League Final dominate the Superbowl in terms of worldwide audience. Seems I was wrong. Seems I was guilty of underestimating the other football, just as some US sports fans are guilty of underestimating soccer.

Also seems that the reason for the Champions League being so widely watched in 2009 might be the teams involved. Barcelona and Man Utd are big big brands, and apparently this helped to tip the scales for soccer, especially in everyone’s favourite new marketplace:

“The Champions League has been better able to exploit the large burgeoning populations of the Asia-Pacific region,” said Kevin Alavay, the report’s director, who noted the presence of global brands such as Barcelona and Manchester United helped UEFA.

…

“While the Super Bowl has secured free-to-air broadcasting deals in a number of important European markets such as the UK, France and Germany, it’s distribution and popularity in the key Asia-Pacific region lags far behind the UEFA Champions League,” said the report.

Of course the Champions League and the Superbowl – and every other sporting event for that matter – should find a backseat and get comfortable this year. Because 2010 is a World Cup year, and that’s a tournament with a proper global audience.

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Category: Champions League

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Ben Hastie

The main thing to consider is that American Football's showpiece event (for the entire sport) is the Superbowl. Whereas the CL final is the showpiece of Europian soccer. All the other soccer playing continents will have their own event. The CL finals rise in audience is due to the fact that the majority of the worlds best players now play in Europe, compared to a few decades ago when "the worlds best" where more evenly spread throughout the world.

Also advancements in TV technology has allowed more people than ever to view live sport in general. The world has always had a bigger apitite for soccer but untill recently has the CL final and the Superbowl been able to be broadcast in Thiland perhaps?
Ali B

I still think CL had a bigger audience than the Superbowl, even before this year. The thing is, in the US, they have sophisticated ratings systems and basically count everybody that watches the game. Not really the same for the rest of the world. For example, how do they know how many people watch the CL final in India? I'm from Iran, and I can say that a few million definitely watch the CL final there, close to no one watches the Superbowl (its not even broadcast), and we have no ratings system. So how do they take that in to account?
Luka

Don't forget that a lot of football fans are so partisan that they have no interest in watching certain teams playing. For example, myself being a Chelski fan, I considered not even bothering to watch the final as I dislike United and that *stuff* that happened at the Bridge involving some Scandinavian referee really annoyed me. Others may have actually decided to boycott. And, we all know Chelsea has at least 300 million supporters all over the world...
Lord Quas

Casual fans in America will watch the NFL. Casual fans in Europe just follow their own local club.
dudeufugly

Yeah, that's all bogus, the only ones that care about the Superbowl are the people in the states, the CL final is watched worldwide. And i still can't understand why you call "football" a sport in which you pass the ball with your hands 99.99 percent of the time, yet you refuse to call the REAL football by its rightfully given name and instead call it that word "soccer"; but hey, you elected Bush twice, so...
Ian

As a few folks have mentioned, I'll be curious to see how the move to a Saturday CL final affects this comparison. It should help at least in terms of overseas viewers, who used to have to watch in the middle of a weekday, but we'll see.
Dan

hey, you have to remember that the superbowl is the *world championship*!! ;) heheh
Chun-Cheng Chang

The NFL is huge in America because they only play 16 games in the regular season, and a playoff which all culminates to the Super Bowl. The less games, the more importance of each game, the more coverage.

Far more people in the world, play or watch soccer, but I think the Champions League has too many games spread over too long of a period of time for it the fervor of the Superbowl on a regular basis. However, that might change in the near future, since its the best annual soccer event.

The World Cup on the other hand, one can easily see why its the biggest sporting event in the world with 2 billion people watching. Happens once every 4 years, very few matches, and enormous importance of each match. Add the fact that countries are being represented creates even more fervor and zeal from fans.
sandrahn

It could be just due to the culmination of the increased level of global access audiences have to European football over the last decade, and the accompanying increased level of marketing of the champions league on a global scale.
Daryl

Yeah, I'm not saying that's the main reason. Just that it helped.
Chris

Daryl, I don't have an answer but I don't necessarily agree that it was the appearance of United and Barcelona that put the CL Final over the top. If it were as simple as that. I would have expected that other finals that featured "global" brands like 04/05, 05/06, and 06/07 (Liverpool-Milan, Barcelona-Arsenal, and Liverpool-Milan) would have had a bigger TV audience than the Super Bowl of the same year. . .
Sheps

I too would expect soccer to receive more coverage. But you also have to take into account that the superbowl is THE biggest American football game every year. And it's more than just a sporting event - it's the 2nd biggest day for food consumption in America - bigger than Christmas!

Football (soccer) on the other hand, has so many different leagues and cups, and a club/national split that spreads out coverage compared to the single NFL.

So it doesn't surprise me that they about compare equally over the last couple of years.
Joe Wright

I bet if you added people watching live Internet streams the numbers would jump quite highly again.
Jose47

Yeah but the supremacy and branding of European football is more recent. Remember this only just the club confederation trophy for one region.
bookmakers

you cant compare, soccer is worldwide...