Why is the World Cup the greatest sporting event of them all?

Football touches us in different ways, often worming its way into our souls when we least expect it, writes Hamish McRae

It reminds us that we are pretty much the same under our skin (Getty)

The superlatives abound. The World Cup is the greatest sporting event of them all, and by a huge margin. Back in 2018, more than half of the world, 3.572 billion people, watched it in some way or another. That compares with 3.05 billion for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, and 2.01 billion for the Winter Olympics in Beijing this year.

Football has more regular followers than any other sport: 3.5 billion, compared with 2.5 billion for cricket, 2 billion for field hockey, and 1 billion for tennis. And while we won’t know the final tally for the World Cup this year for a while, we know that the 0-0 draw between England and the US was the most-watched men’s football match on US television ever.

We had an estimate earlier this year from Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, that 5 billion people would watch this year’s tournament, and if that proves right then it will indeed have been the largest sporting event of all time, by a huge margin.