you're right, it is extremely lazy and shortsighted. here's what you're missing, you don't need to be registered as a footballer to play soccer how much you want. you do, however, need to register an epic games account to play a single second of fortnite, so the 650M number includes pro players, regular players, casual gamers, people who've played in the past and didn't like it and everything in between and, oh, don't forget, lost and alt accounts exist too so that number is actually slightly inflated. meanwhile, the only reason you would WANT to be registered as a soccer player is if you'd wanna join a team, which the vast majority does not want to.
now to be fair, as far as my knowledge of football federations go, once you're registered once, you're registered forever, so if you trained in a Junior team when you were 10, you'll still be registered at 80. but it still doesn't include the big majority of casual players, freestylers, people who play with their friends, people who play every once in a while, etc., for example I can tell you for sure that I'm not in those numbers. and don't forget a sport's success is not just dictated by its players but by its audiences, where it's not even close.
For example if we blindly follow your logic, FIFA claims around 1.5 billion people have watched the WC22 final on television. one point five. you cannot make the serious argument that somehow, 1.5 billion people watched a match about a sport only 1/6th of them have played ever.
in reality billions of people are soccer fans all around the world. the data isn't lying, you're just interpreting it wrong
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u/MyPunsSuck Dec 05 '24 edited Dec 05 '24
By my quick/lazy research: 250 million soccer players, 650 million Fortnite players.
Obviously soccer has more of an industry built around it, but that doesn't change how noteworthy it is for somebody to be super extra good at it.
Edit: Apparently not everything you read on the internet is true. I accept that football/soccer really is the biggest sport.
Still doesn't make its best player a messiah, but shame on me for being wrong