Hmmm... hard to tell from that info but It would be bewildering to thing that 1 in 12 people in the world watched F1 Given that probably 1/2 the population in the world doesn't have easy access to a television.. I think those numbers represent total viewership, meaning they counted each of us 19 times last year. Minus a few of the lucky ones that went to a GP live.
I doubt it, the cumulative figures for the 2006 Fifa World Cup were in excess of 25 billion people. I highly doubt F1 is one thirteenth the size of the World Cup, considering it's a known fact that The Olympics, the Fifa World Cup and Formula 1 are the three most watched sporting events in the world.
For contrast, 4.7 billion individuals are estimated to have watched The Beijing Olympics. There are something like 1.2 Billion TVs in use worldwide, for about 6.9 Billion people. Significantly less than half the population of the earth has no easy access to a TV. In short, 527 Million people seeing the F1 World Championship is not unrealistic. Your estimate puts the number at 27 million people worldwide. I gotta tell you, that's a pretty unlikely number, since the BBC alone accounted for more than 30 million individuals watching F1 in 2009.
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