Photo: Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press
The BC Government posted a press release on their website today about changing the Olympic rings that have been floating in Vancouver’s Harbour for the past year into the Paralympic Symbol. But something in the text caught my eye:
With 3.5 billion people – more than half the world’s population – watching the Games and more than 250,000 people visiting B.C., the giant Olympic Rings proved to be a popular visual component for the festive atmosphere in the City of Vancouver during the month of February.
3.5 billion people. First of all, no. And second of all, no. There’s absolutely nowhere that the government could have got this figure other than from the wisps of thin air. The actual figure appears to have come from the IOC themselves, but what evidence they provide of this is also a mystery. For whatever reason, nobody in the media seems to have challenged this claim.
For the record, 3.5 billion is over half the population of the planet. The reason that the figure is unlikely is that the vast majority of the world’s population resides in countries without winter sports, or access to basic technology that would provide them with a link to the Olympics. Somehow I sincerely doubt that Somalians were huddled around the tribal TV set to catch the Canada-US Gold medal hockey game.
The official ratings for the Olympic gold-medal hockey game attracted a massive North American television audience, making it the most-viewed hockey game in the United States in 30 years and the most-viewed show of any kind in Canadian history. NBC drew an average of 27.6 million viewers, while Canada drew an average of 16.6 million. VANOC claims that 26.5 million Canadians watched at least part of the game.
It’s still a mountain climb away from 3.5 billion. Perhaps, like McDonalds, they’re counting aggregate views. If you count each person dozens of times during the Olympics, you can easily turn a viewership of a hundred million into a few billion. But that’s really stretching the truth to the breaking point.
I remember hearing the NFL state that the Super Bowl was the most watched sporting event in history and yet when the World Cup (soccer)draw was made for the games in the US there were over 800 million world wide who watched and that is just the seeding draw. I can/could see where over a billion people might watch the Cup in South Africa this year (less than 100 days away!! – yahoo). For anyone to state that the winter Olympics can out draw soccer is a real stretch.
Exactly. The entire population of Europe, for example, is 600 million. The whole thing. The U.S. has 300 million, Canada has 33 million, and Russia has 140 million. Add them all together and you’re still 2.4 billion short.
“The reason that the figure is unlikely is that the vast majority of the world’s population resides in countries without {snip} access to basic technology that would provide them with a link to the Olympics.”
Actually, the majority of the world’s population DOES have internet and television access. Wake up and smell the 21st century…
However, I agree that the numbers given were likely exaggerated to some degree, probably a very large degree.
The NFL used to claim that over a billion people watched the Super Bowl, until an American university professor who taught a course in logic,challenged them on it in a well written book.
Their claim was laughable and one of the NFL’s hypotheosis the prof mentioned in her book was that in Saudi Arabia, every TV set had 20 people in front of it watching the blessed Super Bowl.
They mow claim 100 million will watch it.
3.5 billion? I doubt it, One thing we westernized folks don’t realize is that not everyone shares our enthusiasm for winter sports, or any sports for that matter. But,the higher the numbers,the more they can charge the sponsors.
Yeah, I suppose it’s about the marketing. By the way, this slipped into the National Post:
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/05/adrian-macnair-the-whole-world-was-watching-olympics-and-mars-too.aspx
One of the comments mentions a blog entry at the Tyee that I hadn’t come across which is now prescient:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/02/11/CrazyTalk/