Claim: A user on Twitter stated that the presentation ceremony of Cristiano Ronaldo at Al-Nassr FC was viewed more than the FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar.
Verdict: The tweet that the presentation ceremony of Cristiano Ronaldo at Al-Nassr FC was viewed more than the FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar is misleading. No sufficient evidence or reliable source backs the claim.
Full Text
Towards the tail end of 2022, Christiano Ronaldo made a career move to leave his Manchester United club for a Saudi Arabian club, Al-Nassr FC. The deal was reported to be worth millions of Euros. Since the club announced his arrival, football fans have been anticipating the unveiling of the veteran footballer at his new club.
On Thursday, January 5, just two days after Ronaldo was unveiled at the Al-Nassr stadium, a Twitter user, Twilight (@the_marcoli_boy), claimed that Ronaldo’s unveiling event had more views than the World Cup final. He went ahead to say that Ronaldo is more than football (banter).
“Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr presentation had more views than the World Cup Final. He is bigger than Football🐐.”
While most users perceived the tweet as harmless football talk that idolises Ronaldo’s legendary football career, the comparison to the World Cup finals attracted substantial interest.
A poke through Google search to see if this is the case of an isolated claim threw up an interesting result. Around the time the tweet was made, many blogs had picked the same claim, distributing it all over the search engine. A look at a few of them pointed towards another account of an acclaimed journalist, Pedro Sepúlveda.
His tweet, which was made a few hours after @the_marcoli_boy’s post, tagged the official handle of the FIFA World Cup as a show of confidence in the statement.
The tweet attracted diverse opinions; while some users believed the claim, others expressed their scepticism. A Twitter user, @Rose31999202, described Ronaldo as a king deserving the attention. “It’s a CR7 effect. We love our King.”
Verification
In his post, DUBAWA noticed that the claimant never mentioned the names of the 40 channels that screened the said presentation. He also did not define the channels to know if they were TV stations or YouTube channels, making his post a conjecture at best.
Nonetheless, a report by Trenddetail mentioned that five channels (Saudi sports, 1SSC Saudi sports channels, Bein Sports news channel, Abu Dhabi Sports Channel, and Sports TV Portuguese channel) would telecast the presentation. However, still, there was no tally of the number of viewers.
El-Nassr‘s presentation video on its YouTube channel had less than 50,000 views when this report was filed.
The world’s population, according to the UN, is 8 billion. To say three billion watched Ronaldo’s debut would mean more than 37% of the world’s population were connected. There is no evidence to back this.
Although FIFA is yet to release the official figure of viewers who tuned into the 2022 World Cup final, a report showed that BBC streaming service alone had 10 million views of the final. In 2018, 1.12 billion people watched the final match between France and Croatia. With the hype around the Qatar campaign being a better edition in terms of engagement, the viewers’ participation in 2022 may be slightly higher.
Additionally, there was no report from any credible media about this unprecedented phenomenon. This is very unusual considering the media attention Ronaldo has amassed since announcing his intentions to join the Saudi Arabian Club.
Conclusion
There is no sufficient evidence or reliable source backing the claim that Ronaldo’s unveiling at his new club, Al-Nassr, had more views than Qatar’s 2022 world cup finals. This tweet is misleading.
This content was first published on Legit.
