Opinion | English Premier League: is Manchester City and Liverpool’s new bar going to end global dominance?
- Record viewing figures this season, helped in part by the title race going to the final day
- Continued success of English top-flight clubs has coincided with falling crowd numbers in domestic leagues around the world
“We always hope the race for the title continues right up until the final day,” said Richard Masters, interim chief executive of the English Premier League ahead of last week’s final game, “and Liverpool and Manchester City have delivered on that – in some style”.
That final day of the season, which could have seen Manchester City or Liverpool crowned champions and for 83 seconds seemed to have the title on the way to Anfield, was watched by millions worldwide.
In the US, broadcaster NBC and ratings firm Nielsen said that 2.2 million tuned in to watch what they called “Championship Sunday”. That was the highest number of viewers for a Premier League final day and 19 per cent up on the previous season.
The US is not an exception. As per the Premier League, viewer numbers are up at home and abroad with several countries seeing their largest ever audience for a single game. In India, it was for Liverpool taking on Manchester United, South Korea saw a record number tune in to watch Son Heung-min’s Spurs side play Wolves and Norway hit a high for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s first game in charge at Old Trafford, against Huddersfield Town.
With 80 broadcasters screening games in 212 countries to an average global audience of 12 million for each of the 380 games per season it’s fair to say that the Premier League is the world’s league. In fact, despite the numbers being up for TV viewers and the majority of the broadcast money coming from the UK rather than overseas, a much larger number of people watch outside of England. This doesn’t even take into account those watching illegally.
