An estimated 650 million television viewers worldwide watched the Man City-Man United blockbuster at Etihad Stadium yesterday, City’s home ground.
A staggering stat for a club game, which Man City won 1-0 to edge in front of their bitter rivals on top of the EPL table with just two rounds to go.
City hasn’t won the title for 44 long years, while United has worn the crown for 12 of the 26 years Sir Alex Ferguson has been in charge.
Taking the 650 million as read, as there are no foolproof methods of accuracy, that makes a club game the world record holder of viewers for a non-international sporting event.
http://www.theroar.com.au/2012/05/02/manchester-set-a-club-television-audience-world-record/
And if you consider that source a bit too partisan, this is what Wiki has to say.
The Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people, often on networks owned and/or controlled by 21st Century Fox (which owns about 39% of BSkyB in the UK). The Premier League's production arm, Premier League Productions, is operated by IMG Productions and produces all content for its international television partners.
The Premier League is particularly popular in Asia, where it is the most widely distributed sports programme. In Australia, Fox Sports broadcasts almost all of the season's 380 matches live, and Foxtel gives subscribers the option of selecting which Saturday 3pm match to watch. In India, the matches are broadcast live on STAR Sports. In China, the broadcast rights were awarded to Super Sports in a six-year agreement that began in the 2013–14 season.[104] As of the 2013–14 season, Canadian broadcast rights to the Premier League are jointly owned by Sportsnet and TSN, with both rival networks holding rights to 190 matches per season.
The Premier League is broadcast in the United States through NBC Sports.[106] Premier League viewership has increased rapidly, with NBC and NBCSN averaging a record 479,000 viewers in the 2014–15 season, up 118% from 2012–13 when coverage still aired on Fox Soccer and ESPN/ESPN2 (220,000 viewers), and NBC Sports has been widely praised for its coverage. NBC Sports reached a six-year extension with the Premier League in 2015 to broadcast the league through the 2021–22 season in a deal valued at $1 billion (£640 million).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_League
= new reply since forum marked as read
