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The Sunday Times just now tweeted:

Kate astonished everyone in royal circles with how she handled their wedding in April 2011, watched by an estimated global audience of two billion.

New York Times back then

Viewing estimates for the ceremony, at 11 a.m. British time on the dot, hovered in the three billion range, give or take 500 million.

but it's mum on the sources of this number.

Is there any merit to this bombastic claim?

chx
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    Closely related questions: [a billion viewers of the Rumble in the Jungle](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/52866/26673), [3.5 billion watching the Tour de France](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/22106/26673). – IMSoP Jan 09 '22 at 16:55
  • I asked the first one but that's ancient. This one is in a more modern age. – chx Jan 09 '22 at 19:36
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    Yes, they're all good questions; I just thought it would be useful to cross-reference them, particularly the recently asked one about the boxing match. – IMSoP Jan 09 '22 at 20:00
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    This link says 30 *million* but won't show the sources for free: https://www.statista.com/statistics/864195/royal-weddings-viewers/ – Ben Bolker Jan 09 '22 at 21:45
  • The NYT claim seems pretty clearly about a live audience, in which case it seems unlikely very many US citizens would be in their number, since their local time was between 3am and 6am. – Tom Goodfellow Jan 09 '22 at 22:53
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    The press likes to call the Duchess of Cambridge "Kate", maybe because it uses less letters. However, she and her family have always used "Catherine". It would not hurt anyone to be polite enough to use her preferred name. – RedSonja Jan 10 '22 at 10:14
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    @RedSonja To be fair she used to go by Kate and she later asked that people refer to her as Catherine after she started a relationship with Prince William. At least that is my understanding. I am guessing some just keep calling her by what they knew of her in the past. https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/entertainment/kate-middleton-name-change-665759 – Joe W Jan 10 '22 at 18:51
  • @BenBolker Those figures are from the US only, not the world as a whole. Note the "Region: United States" in the infobox, as well as the US-only networks listed in the "Supplementary Notes" section. – F1Krazy Jan 11 '22 at 13:45
  • There's likely to be a very large difference between those who watched the whole ceremony and those who saw a clip on TV news or on social media. I assume the claim relates to the latter not the former, but it's not clear. – Stuart F Jan 17 '22 at 19:50

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