Champions League vs Super Bowl - How Popular is Each?
Published on 05 Feb 2020 | Last updated on 30 Jun 2026 | Reading time: 4 minutes
Super Bowl LIV is over, and the Kansas City Chiefs have been crowned the NFL champions for this season. Around 100 million tuned in to watch the big game during the night in the US, with Fox providing coverage across its cable and satellite broadcasts, mobile streaming, and through services like YouTube TV. Coverage was also available on the NFL.com website, and through many international broadcasters, including Sky Sports and the BBC.
The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in the United States, attracting the biggest TV audience, with nearly one third of the entire country tuned in. This is a significant achievement in the marketing efforts of the NFL over the years, managing to turn the Super Bowl into an unofficial holiday in the US.
However, there is another sporting event that attracts more viewers than the Super Bowl; the Champions League Final. When comparing viewing figures alone, the Champions League Final is the most watched annual sporting event in the world.
Figures vary depending on the source, but the number of people tuning in to watch the final of the Champions League is somewhere between 120 and 400 million, most likely closer to the higher end of that range. According to some sources, the 2018/19 Champions League Final between Liverpool & Real Madrid attracted 380 million people.
Comparing these numbers alone might lead you to conclude that UEFA has done a better job of promoting the Champions League to grow a larger viewership than the NFL has done with the Super Bowl. However, there is a little bit more to it than that.
The Super Bowl
The American football match was first broadcast on TV in 1939, and it is estimated that the game reached 1,000 television sets. Fast forward to 2019, and the Super Bowl was watched by around 100 million people. Almost the entire population of the US catches Super Bowl fever in the lead up to the big game, with many throwing parties or watching the game with friends.
It has also become popular to place bets on the Super Bowl, with as many as 26 million Americans betting around $6.8 billion. This means that around one quarter of the people watching the Super Bowl place a bet on the game as well.
The crucial thing about this figure of 100 million viewers is that they are exclusively coming from within the United States. A further 30-50 million viewers tune in from around the world. While the NFL is trying to expand the reach of its brand abroad, it has yet to be anything more than a niche sport.
The Champions League Final
Source: https://images.unsplash.com/
The Champions League in its current format has only existed since the early 1990s. It was expanded from a simple knockout tournament, to a competition with qualifying, groups and knockout stages, following the expansion of UEFA. Therefore, it has grown to become the world’s most watched annual sporting event in less than three decades.
Although the game will be watched by football fans across Europe, particularly in the countries of the teams that make it to the final, it isn’t as ingrained into popular culture. For example, it is not common for fans to hold Champions League parties, or for businesses to offer “big game promotions” in the lead up to the match.
Betting is popular though. Card processing company, Worldpay, reported 6,000 bets per minute shortly before kick off of the final in 2018/19.
The viewing figures for the Champions League cover the entire globe. In the UK, around 10 million tuned in for last year to watch the final, a drop in the ocean compared to the Super Bowl.
However, the Champions League is a continental competition, and football is a sport played around the world. Many of the world’s best players compete in the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A, and the other top flight European competitions, helping to draw fans from around the world.
Conclusion
In pure numbers, the UEFA Champions League Final is the most watched and most popular annual sporting event in the world. It attracts somewhere between 2 and 4 times the number of people that watch the Super Bowl.
However, the NFL has managed to create a competition that comes close to matching it, with an audience made up almost exclusively of the US population. They have achieved it by creating a special occasion out of the event, helping it to be about shared experiences, and not just the sport.
While they have yet to replicate this success outside of the US, they are working on a strategy to do it. It has taken more than a century to convince one third of Americans to watch the Super Bowl, so it will likely take some time to do it elsewhere too. However, they have a lot more room to grow than UEFA, so they could catch up.
