BT Sport, the UK pay-TV broadcaster, attracted an average audience of 8.7 million for last Saturday’s all-English Uefa Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester City.
The climax to the European club soccer's top competition in Porto in Portugal, which saw Chelsea run out 1-0 winners, was watched by 4.8 million on BT Sport’s linear TV channel and 3.9 million on its digital platforms, with the match available free-to-air online to all viewers via its YouTube channel, mobile app and website.
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The broadcaster also provided free coverage of the showpiece final on Virgin Media as Chelsea secured their second Champions League trophy in front of more than 14,000 fans, one of the biggest European crowds since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
BT Sport's coverage of the last all-English final in 2019 between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur netted a record audience for the broadcaster as a total of 11.3 million tuned in across multiple platforms.
BT Sport also achieved record viewership for its coverage of the Europa League final last Wednesday, which also had English representation as Manchester United took on Spain’s Villarreal in Gdansk, Poland.
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With the match going to extra-time and penalties after a 1-1 draw, BT Sport drew an average audience of 7.4 million viewers for Villarreal’s dramatic winm which the broadcaster said made it the most-watched Europa League final to date.
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By GlobalDataThe audience was made up of 4.3 million on the pay-TV operator’s linear offering and 3.1 million on digital channels as the LaLiga club won their first-ever major trophy.
Elsewhere, RMC Sport, the French pay-TV broadcaster, attracted an average of 2.4 million viewers for the Champions League final on its unencrypted RMC Story channel.
For last season's final, in which French Ligue 1 giants Paris Saint-Germain lost to Germany's Bayern Munich, commercial broadcaster TF1, which had sub-licensed rights from RMC Sport, pulled in an average audience of 11.4 million viewers and a 46.2-per-cent market share.
In Germany, 1.1 million viewers tuned in for this year's final on Sky Deutschland.
The match featured strong German representation with Kai Havertz, who scored the winning goal, starting for Chelsea alongside Timo Werner and Antonio Rudiger, while Thomas Tuchel became the third German manager in succession to win the Champions League. German international Ilkay Gundogan also featured for Manchester City.
Just like in France, the viewership for last year's final was significantly higher in Germany given Bayern's involvement as public-service broadcaster ZDF netted an average audience of 12.8 million viewers, while a further 1.04 million viewers watched the match on Sky.
This year's final was also shown in Germany on OTT subscription platform DAZN but viewing figures have not been released.
In Italy, viewership for the match was down from last year as 4.76 million tuned in on Canale 5, Mediaset’s free-to-air commercial broadcaster, which was equivalent to a 21.7 per cent audience share.
The channel drew 5.65 million, and a share of 29.3 per cent, for the 2020 final.
