The FIFA World Cup, which begins in Moscow on Thursday, is one of the world's biggest sporting spectacles. Every four years, football fans from all over the globe look forward to an action-packed month of competition, culminating in the World Cup Final, arguably the biggest game in the world. During the Super Bowl, which is the biggest game from an American perspective, watched by more than a hundred million people in the US and perhaps another 100 worldwide, the 2014 World Cup final between Argentina and Germany had an average audience of more than 560 million people.

So we have found that the FIFA World Cup is a huge event, but is it really the biggest sporting event ever, in terms of television reach? The answer is a definitive no. According to the IOC, the 2012 London Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics reached 3.6 and 3.5 billion people in their households respectively, surpassing the last two World Cups, which attracted 3.2 billion viewers globally each.

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