体坛英语新闻：Super Bowl becomes "US Lunar New Year Gala" in China

BEIJING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- American football is an unpopular sport in China and that is why many Chinese can hardly imagine how crazy the American fans were when the Denver Broncos upset the top-seeded Carolina Panthers to win Super Bowl 50 on Sunday.

One simple comparison, however, easily solved the problem.

"Super Bowl, a U.S. Lunar New Year Gala," as Sohu.com put it.

The NFL's championship extravaganza took place on Sunday, the same day when the Chinese celebrated the Lunar New Year's Eve, with state broadcaster CCTV's gala show having been a staple of celebrations since the 1980s.

Like the CCTV gala show, Super Bowl is a nation-wide celebration, with singers and dancers performing and usually scoring high TV viewing rate.

According to CCTV's statistics on Tuesday, the 2016 gala show attracted 690 million TV audience while a total of 1.03 billion people watched the TV show on various media including televisions, the internet and social media.

At the same time, viewership tracker Nielsen said the Super Bowl game drew some 111.9 million viewers to make it the third most watched show in U.S. television history.

Relative to respective population, the Super Bowl is indeed as influential in the U.S. as the Lunar New Year Gala in China.

Do you think so?