The 2026 edition of the French Open (Roland Garros) tennis tournament performed strongly in a number of external markets, as a diverse international field capitalized on the absence of the sport’s top stars.
Won by world #3 Alexander Zverev, the tournament naturally drew strong viewership in his home market of Germany, where the showpiece final drew record audiences for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD)-owned Eurosport.
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Without the opposition of Jannik Sinner (World #1), Carlos Alcaraz (#2), or Novak Djokovic (then #4), Zverev was able to make a run to the final before playing out a five-set thriller against Italy’s Flavio Cobolli that drew an average of 2.087 million viewers on Eurosport in Germany.
Despite the lingering domestic abuse allegations that have clouded Zverev’s career in recent years, his victory in the final peaked at 2.8 million, and drew an overall viewership market share in the country of 14.2%, which increased to 17.7% when only considering the target 14-49 age demographic.
This capped off a record day as a whole for Eurosport, which maintained an average market share throughout the day of 6.9%, which is the highest figure the channel has attained in Germany in its history, with the previous record having been set in 1997.
Speaking on the announcement, WBD’s director of sports for the German-speaking region, Jochen Gundel, said: “The enormous response, whether streaming on HBO Max and Discovery+ or on TV on Eurosport – with the historic broadcast day and record ratings, as well as being the most-watched channel throughout Germany during the final – impressively demonstrates how deeply these unique sporting moments resonate with people.
Despite falling in the final, Cobolli’s performance also inspired strong viewership in Italy, where WBD-owned free-to-air channel Canale Nove averaged 2.6 million viewers with a 22% market share.
The successful coverage almost matched the numbers on Rai 1 for the soccer match between the Italian and Greek national teams, which drew a 22.7% market share in prime-time and a 3.7 million viewership (although it was the worst viewership performance for an Italy national team game since 2022).
Elsewhere in French sport, the LFP, organizers of French soccer’s top-flight Ligue 1, have claimed that the 2025-26 edition of the competition reached a multi-year high in terms of international viewership.
A cumulative audience of 520 million was measured across all programming formats in all international markets combined throughout the season, the highest such figure since 2022, and a 28% increase year-on-year (YoY) on the 2024-25 campaign.
This included live game broadcasts (+22% YoY) and ancillary content such as magazine shows (+40% YoY).
A particular market of growth over the campaign has been in Brazil, where coverage on the CazeTV YouTube channel (which holds rights through the 2026-27 season) grew 281% on the previous season, due largely to the success of national team star Endrick on loan at Olympique Lyonnais.
China, where coverage is provided by state broadcaster CCTV and the Migu streaming service, is another of Ligue 1’s core international markets where viewership grew, with the pair combining for a record cumulative audience of 93 million (+12% YoY).
In all, Ligue 1 coverage was disseminated by 52 broadcast partners across 215 global territories.
New agreements struck in advance of the 2025-26 season that aided the viewership growth included Canal+-owned Multichoice, Fox Sports in Mexico, Sky in Italy, VTVcab (Vietnam), ESPN (across Latin America).
The second-tier Ligue 2, also organized by the LFP, saw a strong viewership jump, with the body claiming that league's audience grew by “more than double”, thanks to agreements with CY Sports in China, and Brazil’s Sporty Net, as part of a wider network of 14 international broadcast deals serving 45 markets.
International media rights revenue for the LFP represents around €137.6 million, and to say Ligue 1 has struggled to sell its media rights internationally in recent years would be an understatement.
Nonetheless, these viewership figures internationally serve as a rare broadcast positive for Ligue 1, which in recent years has struggled severely to maintain consistent broadcast relationships on the domestic and international fronts.
Despite launching an in-house direct-to-consumer service (Ligue1+) at the beginning of 2025-26 that hosts eight of the nine weekly matchups in the domestic market, broadcast revenue disbursements for Ligue 1 teams have plummeted year-on-year once again.
French publication L’Equipe reported that total domestic rights income from Ligue1+ across the 2025-26 campaign will total €170.1 million ($199.9 million), which, even though it is above projections, still lags far behind the other Big 5 leagues.
Next season, even with a predicted 200,000 subscriber growth, LFP Media is pre-empting total revenues of €412.2 million in the 2026-27 campaign, of which major investor CVC Capital Partners will take around €65.5 million, while further costs and deductions mean a total of only around €184.1 million will remain to be disbursed across Ligue 1 clubs, heavily weighted in favor of those in European competition, by far the lowest of any Big 5 league.
Even with support from Ligue 1’s reserve fund, this result would, in turn, likely force the majority of Ligue 1 clubs into cost-cutting measures, which in turn further devalues the product for international audiences, maintaining the low media rights values.
Indeed, Ligue1+ may need to triple, or even quadruple, its current subscriber base, or drastically increase its subscription price, to match the media rights income from even the LFP’s disastrous recent cycles.
The service launched in mid-July 2025 at a price point of €14.99 ($17.66) per month for an annual subscription, or a non-committal monthly tier at $19.99 per month.
