The FA Cup is dying, we are often told.
The countryās oldest domestic club competition is on its knees, waiting for the final blow to put everyone out of their misery. The magic it once imbued as long-lost as the myths of Merlin and Excalibur.
Equally, thereās nothing like a sense of perspective: bars and rulers and scales by which to weigh and measure things.
Take, for example, the Club World Cup final. Fifaās marquee club competition nobody wanted nor asked for, but had thrust in front of them this summer, whether they liked it or not.
A Ā£740m prize pool. The best teams from countries around the world. A shiny gold trophy, complete with the signature of Fifa president Gianni Infantino ā engraved on it twice, no less.
According to the latest figures, the final attracted a peak audience of 2.3m on Channel 5, at a steadier average of 1.1m.
My feeling before the tournament was that, even though nobody really cared about it, football fans would still watch in considerable numbers.
Because people simply love watching football on the telly, and there isnāt much of it during the summer.
And if there is Bayern Munich against the second-best team in New Zealand available, then, well, they will stick it on as the background ambience for that eveningās scroll through their phone.
Only, that doesnāt seem to be the case.
Taking a look at the FA Cup third round, and the numbers on Arsenalās televised penalty shootout defeat to Manchester United were significantly higher than the Club World Cup final.
The match attracted a peak audience of 7.4m, on the BBC, while a further 4.3m watched the game on iPlayer.
That is a lot more interest in title challengers against mid-table in the Premier League, in a competition that nobody, apparently, cares about any more, than Chelsea against Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain.
You might suspect timing could be a factor. But the Club World Cup final was at 8pm on a Sunday night ā ideal timing for a UK audience.
The match was available to watch via Dazn. I contacted Dazn to ask for their figures. They did not provide them. Make of that what you will.
Indeed, the Club World Cup final wasnāt even the most popular game in the UK on Sunday night. Englandās 6-1 thrashing of Wales in the Euro 2025 group stage, over on ITV, peaked at 4.4m viewers and averaged 2.9m.
Meanwhile, the England under-21sā victory in the European Championship final was watched by 3.7m on Channel 4 ā a significantly more popular event.
And how does it compare to your average Premier League game on Sky Sports and TNT Sport? Even though both require subscriptions to watch (whereas Channel 5 is free), they averaged 1.78m and 1.15m per game respectively last season. This during a season where viewing figures declined, in part due to a lack of title race or relegation fight at the end of the season.
Both still higher than the Club World Cup final which was, incidentally, the only match of the tournament that sold out.
That was even after Chelsea players started trying to help Fifa flog tickets via their Instagram accounts, and for possibly the first time in history, dynamic pricing significantly drove down the value of tickets.
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Ticket prices decreased for Chelseaās semi-final against Fluminense from Ā£350 to Ā£10. For Chelseaās quarter-final against Palmeiras, they went from Ā£250 to Ā£8.
And at one stage in the tournament there were offers for students to buy one ticket for Ā£14.70 and get four free ā valuing each at Ā£2.94.
Infantino, meanwhile, held court at Trump Tower on the eve of the final, claiming āthe golden era of global club football has startedā, repeatedly insisting he had proved all the doubters and naysayers wrong.
āWe can say definitely that this Fifa Club World Cup has been a huge, huge, huge success,ā he said, the triple āhugeā emphasising quite how huge it has all been.
He added later: āIt is already the most successful club competition in the world with all different measurements.ā
Maybe nobody had shown him the FA Cup third round numbers.
Hollywood fairy tale? My night at Wrexham was more Disneyland rollercoaster