They do add up, joe. I did not make any statement about the percentage of Man U fans to football fans in the UK.....I have no idea what that would be. Have you?
However, I have found this ona an advertising readership site:
http://www.peakdemand.co.uk/blog/facebook-advertising/manchester-united/
"According to Facebook, 170,360 Manchester Utd fans live in Manchester, which represents 17.5% of all Man Utd fans in the UK, but only 1.7% of the 10 million Man Utd fans worldwide."
That maths would therefore uggest there are only a million or so M-U fans in the UK, so the answer is therefore 1.7% of all the UK population - and this then lends itself to deepening my conclusion that it was unbalanced news reporting by the Beeb. To be fair, they had corrected it by 10pm and it was the third item on the programme, a better position for it.