The opening ceremony at last year’s Olympic Games in China was the most watched live event in human history, outstripping the moon landings, the funeral of Princess Diana and Barack Obama’s inauguration. The Sunday Times can reveal that the Beijing extravaganza, staged at the Bird’s Nest stadium on August 8, attracted the world’s first “genuine 1 billion” television audience, according to an authoritative report to be released tomorrow.

The report shows at least 593m people around the world, including 5m in Britain, watched the four-hour show in its entirety (the “average” audience), while 984m tuned in for part of it (the total audience or “reach”, which excludes those who watched in public places).

The aim of the study was to catalogue the most popular sporting events of 2008. The Olympic closing ceremony came second (252m average global audience/778m reach), followed by a China v Cuba volleyball game. The sport is massive in China and that match was the most-watched event by the Chinese population outside the ceremonies. In fourth place was the men’s 100m final.

Football got its first mention in fifth place, with the Euro 2008 final between Germany and Spain (166m average global audience/287m reach), followed by the Super Bowl (104m/152m) and the Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea (98m/208m).

The relative positions of the Euro 2008 and Champions League finals show that international matches can trump club football. But the all-Premier League Moscow final was still more than 30% up in ratings terms on the 2007 Champions League final between AC Milan and Liverpool.

This indicates English football has a massive potential audience when screened widely on free-to-air television. While the Premier League remains available mainly via pay-TV around the world, ratings will not be massive. The marketing stance of Formula One, which deliberately seeks terrestrial TV deals, was rewarded with the eighth most popular event in 2008, the Brazilian Grand Prix.

“Our report takes data from 85% of the world’s TV households and includes only viewers who watched at home, not in public places,” says Kevin Alavy, head of analytics at the global sports research consultancy Futures Sport + Entertainment, which compiled the data. “You can extrapolate from the 984m that the Olympics opening ceremony was the first one billion people occasion ever. It appealed to the huge domestic Chinese audience but resonated globally too.”

The study by FS+E uses only “audited, robust” figures supplied by reputable agencies such as Barb in the UK, Nielsen in the United States and equivalent bodies. The landmark occasion of the Olympics opening ceremony broke the 1 billion barrier to surpass previous contenders for the all-time slot, including the past two football World Cup finals. A key factor in the record total was China’s population of 1.3 billion, of whom 393m watched the whole ceremony live on TV, while many more watched some of it. But the event, starting at 8pm local time and at 1pm in the UK, was popular around the world. Almost 35m people in America watched and nearly 8m in Australia, 5.5m in Italy and 8m in Germany.

Frequent claims have been made of audiences in the multiple billions for events as varied as sporting finals, funerals of public figures, weddings and political events. In most cases these are unsubstantiated guesses, from broadcasters or rights holders. “This tends to be marketing based on hyperbole, based on what an audience could be if every single person who has access to an event watches it,” says Alavy.

The most watched event in British television history was England’s success in the 1966 World Cup final (32.3m) followed by Diana’s funeral in 1997 (32.1m), a 1969 documentary on the royal family (30.69m) and the so-called Den and Angie episode of EastEnders on Christmas Day 1986 (30.15m).

In America, the top-rated television event of all time was the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983, with 106m. Super Bowl finals otherwise dominate the historic ratings. The typical Super Bowl final (with more than 90m viewers) registers more than twice the number of Americans (37.8m) who watched Obama’s inauguration in January.

The world has about 6.8 billion people living in 1.9 billion households and only 1.4 billion of those households have television. Those that don’t tend to be the poorest (and biggest) families. Truly global occasions that bring people together are far and few between, and sports events tend to dominate.

There are some notable quirks in the viewing figures for 2008’s big sports events that highlight certain countries’ interests. The Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea, for example, was watched in its entirety by about 12m people in the UK, or 20% of the population. Portugal was the No 1 country in terms of percentage of the population watching, with about 30% of its inhabitants tuning in to see Cristiano Ronaldo.

If one sport can take a specific message from the report, it is perhaps F1. “The last few seasons suggest that its audience size has reached a natural peak,” says the report, “barring a step change in the sport, such as the emergence of a talented young Chinese driver.” Sports broadcasting’s future is bright, as long as it’s red.