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| 1M watching! |
I was one of the 1 million+ concurrent viewers watching the finals of the SAFF Women's Championship between Nepal and Bangladesh. Tough loss for Nepal, but the game really was not the story. It was the fans!
As expected, Nepal's national stadium, Dasharath Rangashala (yes - where this blog gets its name), was officially packed to capacity at 15,000, with some estimates of an overflow crowd of close to 25,000. Beyond that, there were fan zones setup across the capital and country that attracted tens of thousands of viewers. Then there is the TV viewership - which one sports and media veteran guesstimates at 60% of Nepali households having the game on. This would equate to somewhere around 21 million Nepalis watching the match at home.
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| A jam packed fan zone in Kathmandu. Photo: RONB |
In the sports business space, you often read or hear senior executives celebrating a few thousand views of a live stream of a sport event. Nepali fans say, "Hold my milk tea!"
The sports fan frenzy is not a one-off either. Over the summer Nepali fans watched and attended the Men's National Cricket Team at the T20 World Cup in droves, including packing a stadium in Dallas, Texas. In August, the CAVA Women's Volleyball Challenge Cup, which the Nepal Women's National Volleyball Team hosted had over 400 thousand concurrent viewers for the tournament final which involved Nepal. Given that some of these events are lesser regional tournaments the interest level is even more remarkable.
In Nepali sports, often administrators, politicians, officials and sometimes even players go missing (figuratively and literally!) but the fans keep showing up - no matter the sport, tournament, result or gender.
PS - It's what motivates me to keep at it!
