It’s always entertaining listening to the hyperbole surrounding the Superbowl. 800 million people were watching apparently, according to one commentator (we had the choice of Sky or ITV – but not Five, who of course do nothing to support the sport in the UK besides show several live games a week and regular highlights. Still you wouldn’t want to be loyal to a channel would you?). And then I heard that it’d be the biggest single televised sporting event this year! Just as well that there’s no European football championships then, or a World Cup final, or an Olympic Games.
But I’m sure UEFA would say that something approaching a billion viewers will watch the Champions’ League final (Sadly their archives of old press releases aren’t immediately obvios to me, so I can’t find proof that this is what they say). Of course a billion is still way over the odds unless China is far more interested in the NFL than I’d previously thought. I do understand that the Germans like it.
One strange thing that I did note was that ITV had an “international” commentary feed that I think explained a little more what was happening, while Sky had the Fox feed including promos for shows on that network. The really strange thing was that although they weren’t quite in sync, with ITV just behind Sky for the most part, very occassionally Sky fell behind ITV. Strange. Oh, and the two feeds sometimes chose different camera angles, so different directors to illustrate what the different commentary teams were saying.
Needless to say that like every other year, I fell asleep before the game finished, and the winners were announced as an after-thought on the Radio Five news this morning. As it should be. I wouldn’t have minded staying awake until half-time to catch Paul McCartney though.