The Philadelphia Eagles put the stamp on their historic 2017 season with the victory in Super Bowl LII over the New England Patriots. Initial projections stated that the Eagles celebrated to the tune of over two million fans at their championship parade on Broad Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
However, it seems that figure may have been a bit too high, per Tom Avril of The Inquirer:
The result: An estimated total of close to 700,000 Eagles faithful attended Thursday’s parade, according to a team of crowd-safety experts at Manchester Metropolitan University in England.
Although it may not have been one of the largest gatherings in recent sports history, it is still impressive nonetheless. Given that the city of Philadelphia has an estimated population of 1.5 million people, that means nearly half the city showed up to celebrate their first Super Bowl win in franchise history.
The most populous championship parade occurred in 2004 when an estimated three million people celebrated the Boston Red Sox's first World Series victory in 86 years. However, in order to get a feel of what Philadelphia had to look like in order to reach two million people in attendance, one would have to go back to when the Flyers won the Stanley Cup in 1974. Meanwhile, the only other two events to accrue as many fans were the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and Madrid, Spain after its national team won the World Cup in 2010.
Regardless of the number, it is clear that the “quality” of Eagles' fans certainly made up for the quantity. Philadelphia can also take solace in the fact that they have now joined the ranks of cities with a World Series, NBA championship, Stanley Cup, and Super Bowl victory.