Crowd estimates are almost always purpose-driven, even if there's no politics involved. Back in the 1950's, they used to say that 500,000 people showed up for the hydroplane races on Lake Washington in Seattle, even though the city only had a population of 490,000 and there's no way you could squeeze even 200,000 along that shore.
My favorite was when Compaq tried to justify their expensive sponsorship of Formula One Racing by claiming that it had an audience of 50 billion. Yes Billion with a B.
The world's population is barely 6 billion now.
Even if there were a race a week with 20% of the Earth watching every time, that number was BS.