which event is biggest on the world stage, the olympic games or the fifa world cup?

Question

i want to know facts and statistics rather tan opinions. Thanks.

Answer 1

The biggest sporting event on the planet is the Fifa World Cup!
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely-viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games.
The cumulative audience of the World Cup 2002 event - including all of the matches - is estimated to be 28.8 billion.
1.1 billion individuals watched the final match of this tournament (a sixth of the entire population of the planet). (Television coverage in 213 countries and over 41,100 hours of programming)

But, look at these statistics:

In the US soccer still ranks below televised poker tournaments in a land where baseball, basketball and American football rule.

Only 3.9 million Americans watched the 2002 World Cup final, which had an audience of 1.1 billion worldwide. (By comparison, nearly 91 million viewers watched this year's Super Bowl. Nearly 39 million watched the Academy Awards, in March and 36 million tuned in for May's finale of "American Idol".)

No surprise, then, that a poll by the Global Market Insite market research service found that only 11 percent of Americans surveyed were "definitely" interested in the World Cup, compared with 45 percent of respondents world-wide.

The poll revealed that 56 percent of Americans did not even know that the 2006 World Cup was taking place in Germany.





To some of the previous answerers, that didn't do any research and are proof that Americans are indeed pretty much ignorant when it comes to the sport of soccer:

The Fifa has 207 member nations.
Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six populated continents participated in the qualification process for the 2006 World Cup Tournament. Thirty-two teams qualified from this process for the final tournament.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens 202 countries participated.
78 countries participated at the 02 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City

Answer 2

the FIFA World Cup is the biggest sporting events in the world. for the World Cup final alone, the match is watched by billions of people on earth, almost as many as half of the worlds' populations.

Answer 3

World Cup!

Answer 4

Obviuosly in America, the Olympics are more watched because soccer isn't so much influenced as it is everywhere else in the world. But overall, worldwide, the world cup is definitly the more wathced. Not too many people care about sports that they never show on TV except for one time.

Answer 5

When you look at the difference between them,

The world normally mainly covers european countries with a few south america and few other teams from different parts of the world.

Whilst the olympics has a wider audience and has countries from nearly every country in the world competing. So surely more people would watch them.

So I would say the olympics.

Answer 6

i would say the world cup. The reason being that football is the most interesting game anyone is ever interested in and there are more football fans than the Olympics fans.

Answer 7

FIFA world cup is the biggest and the best

Answer 8

The World Cup because more poeple watch it and it has a bigger effect on the public eg. the rooney n ronaldo problem. And its more interesting.

Answer 9

I guess the Olympics is, because more teams can compete throughout the whole competition, rather than it being wittled down. Therefore more countries will be envoloved.

Tough choice when your watching them though!

Answer 10

The world cup by far.
Only the USA and obscure tribes in jungles don´t watch it.