The women’s European football championships in England brought people to the stands and to the television transmitters in a historic way.
This year, the women’s European football championships gathered record numbers of viewers both in Finland and in Europe. July 6–31 the matches and studio broadcasts of the organized tournament found a total of 2.6 million Finns in their living rooms. showed all matches live on TV2, TV1 and Areena, with commentary in Finnish and Swedish. All matches in Finland were also heard on the radio on Puhe.
Among the Helmareit matches, the largest audience was gathered by the match between Finland and Denmark, which was predicted to be the most even. An average of 418,000 pairs of eyes watched the first-round match in question, which ended 1–0 for Denmark. In total, the Denmark match reached 794,000 Finns.
– The European Championships were in many ways record-breaking across Europe, and our figures also show the increase in interest. The importance of the wide free visibility of these games is that the general public’s perception of women’s sports expands and becomes more diverse. In addition to the game, role models and their stories emerge, said the head of Urheilu Joose Palonen.
On average, the women’s European Championship match had 241,000 spectators and the reach was 573,000 people. The matches of the men’s European football tournament organized a year ago attracted an average of 528,000 spectators and the reach at that time was 996,400. The difference between women and men is still visible, but the growth in popularity that started with the 2019 Women’s World Cup has clearly continued in the European Championships as well.
Popularity is reflected, among other things, in the viewership figures for the finals. In the Women’s World Cup tournament in 2019, the final match between the USA and the Netherlands was watched by an average of 535,000 spectators in Finland. On Sunday, the European Championship final between England and Germany was watched by an average of 631,000 spectators.
In 2019, the World Cup final reached 699,000 Finns, and this year the final reached a whopping 1.3 million Finns.
During the European Championship, it was written about the low visibility of the tournament on the streets of England. In addition, the small stadiums in the early stages of the tournament spoke volumes. However, the crowd record for the final match at London’s Wembley was able to show the true success of women’s football. The crowd of 87,192 for the sold-out final is the largest ever for an EC tournament, when women’s and men’s tournaments are included.
The 2022 women’s EC tournament will also go down in history in light of all-time audience records. In the 31 matches of the tournament, 574,875 spectators gathered in the stands. The new audience record is more than half the previous record from the 2017 European Championships in Holland (approx. 240 thousand).
The records of individual matches were also broken, when the matches had an average of 18,544 spectators. The previous record for the average audience per match was from the 1989 European Championship in West Germany, when the average audience was 9,000 spectators per match.
The viewership figures for the final show its popularity across Europe. The final match became the most watched women’s football match of all time in Germany and England.
In Germany, the broadcasting company ARD watched an average of more than 17.89 million people. The previous audience record was from 2011, when Germany met Japan in the quarterfinals of the World Cup at home. At that time, an average of 16.95 million pairs of eyes followed the match. Britain’s BBC1 telecast reached 17.4 million people and the match was watched by an average of 11 million viewers.
The good success of Länsinaupuri was also reflected in the viewership figures of the Swedish public broadcasting company SVT. Sweden’s quarterfinal match against Belgium was watched by more than 2 million pairs of eyes. The previous viewership record, 1.5 million, was from the 2017 European Championship, when Germany and Sweden met in the preliminary round.
In Finland, the content of the women’s European football championship attracted interest not only on television but also online. A total of 7 million visits were made to the online content of the Games during the tournament.
Sources: TV meter survey, Finnpanel Oy. The numbers represent Finland’s population over 4 years old (TV viewership figures). Adobe Analytics, ‘s data cloud (other chapters), UEFA, BBC, ARD and SVT (international chapters)