Sunday’s Uefa Women’s Champions League final between Lyon and Wolfsburg attracted record viewing figures in both France and Germany.
Lyon’s 3-1 victory was watched by an average of 645,000 subscribers on Canal Plus, along with a peak of 786,000 subscribers, a tournament record for the French pay-television broadcaster.
The match was also aired in France on free-to-air digital terrestrial channel W9, which pulled in an average of 1.09 million viewers, a 4.9-per-cent market share.
The French club won its fifth successive title by defeating Wolfsburg in San Sebastian and a record seventh crown overall.
Lyon’s victory over Barcelona in last year’s Women’s Champions League final was broadcast in France by both Canal Plus and TMC, the TF1-owned free-to-air digital terrestrial channel. TMC attracted an average audience of 780,000 viewers (and 6.3-per-cent market share) for the match, along with a peak of 1.02 million viewers.
In Germany, this year’s final was watched by an average of 880,000 viewers (a 2.9-per-cent share) on the free-to-air Sport1 channel, a new record high for a live women’s football shown by the broadcaster.
The match also attracted 167,000 views on Sport1’s YouTube channel and 85,000 views for coverage on the Sport1 app.
Wolfsburg’s semi-final win over Barcelona was watched by an average of 630,000 viewers on Sport1.
The rights to the final were sold by Team Marketing, European football governing body Uefa’s exclusive sales agent for rights to its club competitions. Individual clubs are responsible for the sale of rights to their home legs in all earlier knockout rounds.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that the quarter-finals and semi-finals were one-legged affairs on neutral grounds, leaving the two involved clubs to jointly market the rights.
Uefa will centralise all media rights for the Women’s Champions League from the 2021-22 season onwards as part of a revamp of the competition that will see the creation of a 16-team group stage.