Soccer, arguably the most popular sport, attracts 700M viewers in 2010 World cup final. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/live-feed/fifa-700-mil-worldwide-watch-53991 For Olympic MS Final? http://www.london2012.com/news/articles/round-badminton-tournament-serves-treat.html ~20% of world's population, that means ~1.4 Billion. Although China may already make up much of this 1.4 Bil, that is still a very respectable number.
1.4 billion? If everyone in China (1.3 billion) and Malaysia (28 million) watched it, that will only come up to ... let's see 1.3 billion + 28 million = 1.3 billion So, there are 100 million non-Chinese and non-Malaysian badminton fans all over the world. And that's assuming every single Chinese watched it. Hopefully, some millions of those were drawn by curiousity because of the scandal.
As from the first link, even 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony only attracted 600M viewers worldwide, seems very unlikely more than that number of people in China was watching the final, there should be huge contribution from India, Indonesia, Korea and Japan as well.
that's a really FUNNY stat... do you know how do they count the number of TV viewers? ha ha ha the rating company XXX said this number NNN bla bla bla.... i always feel greatly amazed with the ability to count the TV viewers for any event or any TV show.... AS IF there's any counter embedded into our TV sets that steadily give feedback to the data collector something like an internet click count maybe one day in the near future the so-called Smart TV with internet-enabled feature & connected will automatically report back to some data aggregator what TV show one is watching at any given time.... now the BIG BROTHER is in your living room
Not every tv has one but some televisions has a viewing meter attached to it and it measures what your watching. Kinda like a poll.
Those WDdisqualifications probably helped it, at least with Austria and Canada, since they are unlikely to vote badminton off with their athletes featuring in the semis.
