Forget the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup. Just focus on which sporting event, year by year, attracts the biggest crowds and makes the most money in the process. Here is a countdown of the biggest sporting events on the planet!
5. NBA Finals
In terms of sporting finals, few countries create a grand stage like the American sports, and the NBA Finals is not an exception.
The finals series, generally consisting of 4 to 7 games between the top two basketball teams from the regular season, is among the most lucrative TV advertising slots, year on year. Marketplace report that in 2016, business and brands paid up to $600,000 per 30-seconds of advertising during the finals series.
Time also report that Game 7 of the 2016 series has a viewership of 29 million, while the whole series brought in a total of 155 million viewers. They continue to report that each game of the final series is worth $80m in advertising revenue, taking the total for this year’s series to $560m.
4. Tour De France
In spite of the long shadow cast by the Lance Armstrong doping scandal and the stripping of his 7 titles, the Tour De France has continued to thrive.
The TV ratings, according to The National, are also huge with 3.5bn viewers in 190 countries and territories while the Tour’s average TV revenue of €24m is lower than the biggest sporting events, the 15 million viewers who watch the race in person trounces any other sporting event in the planet.
And, certainly, the revenue generated by such an incredible number of fans certainly fills the gap left by modest television revenue. For example, take the Grand Depart on day one of the tour. In 2014, at the Grand Depart in Yorkshire, England, up to five million teabags and 60,000 bags of sweets were bought by spectators. Multiply that figure over the three week period of the tournament and you’ve got a hefty sum of revenue at the end.