THE NAKED CITY – SHANE WARNE’S TABLOID BILLIONS

The sudden death of cricketer Shane Warne was a huge media story in Australia and widely covered throughout the world’s media, especially amongst the various cricketing nations. The live telecast of his memorial service at Melbourne’s MCG was extensively promoted as a global event, forecast to attract a viewing audience of over one billion. The reality was quite different. 

If you believed the massive media hype that preceded the MCG event more than one in five people around the globe would be tuning into the telecast that was carried on a number of Australian TV networks. Few in the media at the time questioned that prediction, no doubt not wanting to show any disrespect for a sportsman regarded as a national hero.

Whilst a billion viewers was the popular prediction, the UK’s Daily Mail let loose with tabloid frenzy touting an audience of ‘billions’, scrambling to their TV sets and devices at all hours of the day and night. Even the normally sane ABC TV breakfast program was beset by the euphoria of the event, predicting a global audience of around 1.5 billion.

Following the MCG service, there seemed little questioning by our local media as to the actual number of global viewers, even when it was revealed that well less than three million Australians tuned in, significantly less than the average AFL  grand final which regularly pulls in four million plus. One of the few journalists who questioned the figure of one billion worldwide viewers was the Sydney Morning Herald’s Osman Faruqi when he wrote:

“Sure, Warnie was beloved right around the world – including in the subcontinent – but the idea that somewhere between one-eighth and one-quarter of the entire world would drop everything they were doing so they could watch Sam Newman farewell a leg spinner felt pretty outlandish.”

Even with some really generous accounting Faruqi suggests that the viewing audience was well shy of 450 million and I would argue it was more likely a fraction of that figure. After all, at any one time about 40% of the world’s population is asleep, so there’s a good number already not watching live unless they have stayed up all night. Subtract 1.4 billion or more Chinese and most of the billion plus population of Africa (South Africa and Zimbabwe excepted) and the potential TV audience is fast diminishing.

The English love their cricket but the rest of the 680 million Europeans have almost no interest. Likewise North and South America, minus around 45 million in the Caribbean. That leaves another 950 million who have probably heard of Tom Brady and Maradona, but not our own ‘king of spin’.

Throw in the Middle East, a large part of South East Asia, Japan and Taiwan and with no disrespect there are an awful lot of people who had never heard of Shane Warne. That leaves us cricket mad India with a current population of 1,406,631,776. It’s feasible that millions could have downed tools in the middle of the day, rushing to the nearest TV set, to take in the MCG service. If the memorial was for Sachin Tendulkar, that’s quite possible but for the ‘king of spin’ and one of the traditional cricketing enemies, highly unlikely.

The Daily Mail predicted an audience of some 300 million viewers in India, tuned to the MCG memorial, on a variety of devices. I checked with an Indian friend, a journalist in Mumbai and whilst he reported that Warne’s passing received wide coverage in the Indian media, he suggested only a tiny minority would have watched the actual memorial service although it did receive wide coverage on the evening TV news.

Taking all this into account and the fact that well less than three million Australians watched the MCG service, on both live TV and various devices, the total worldwide audience was more than likely around twenty to thirty million when it came to live viewers. That in itself is a significant number but obviously well short of the 1.5 billion so enthusiastically touted on ABC TV breakfast. Fact check please!