Argentina won the soccer world championship in a dramatic final, which reached 2.3 million Finns on TV.
11:29•Updated 11:30
Qatar’s disputed World Cup soccer tournament ended on Sunday with Argentina’s celebrations. Argentina won the World Cup after a penalty shootout 4–3.
The final was a dramatic display of football, where Argentina already took a two-goal lead, but France equalized with goals from Kylian Mbappe. Also in the follow-up match, Argentina led, but Mbappe equalized.
In the end, Argentina’s superstar Lionel Messi got the World Cup gold he had been chasing for a long time, when Argentina was better in the penalty shootout.
The Finns had a good time at the games, even though the World Cup in Qatar received more criticism than usual due to, among other things, the country’s human rights problems.
The matches and studio broadcasts of the World Cup tournament reached a total of 3.4 million television viewers on ‘s channels. According to Finnpanel, the matches reached an average of 877,000 viewers.
The dramatic final reached 2.3 million Finnish TV viewers. On average, 1.5 million people watched the match. In Areena, the app and EPN.fi, the final match accumulated more than 930,000 starts.
In Areena, the competitions broke records. A total of 5.1 million hours were watched at Areena. Records were broken especially in the under-45 age group, for whom tournament viewing increased by 31 percent compared to the 2018 World Cup.
– The World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the world, and these viewership figures show how important it is for Finns as well, Urheilu’s head Joose Palonen commented.
– At the heart of the FIFA World Cup are wonderful, dramatic games, but they are always connected to talking points from outside the field. We offered Finns all aspects of the extraordinary games held in Qatar.
The popularity of the competitions was also reflected in ‘s online services. The live tracking article, which compiled the most important events of the Games, was visited 1.03 million times. The Futistietäjä competition quiz was visited 1.03 million times.
Futistietäjä was part of ‘s offer for the first time in the 2018 men’s WC tournament. Since then, betting has been a popular part of ‘s offer in value football tournaments.
showed 42 matches live from the Games. In addition to , the World Championships were shown by MTV in Finland.