The World Cup semi-finals produced significant viewership numbers in the major soccer markets involved, as Spain and Argentina booked their place in Sunday’s showpiece final.
In the first of the two semi-finals, Spain defeated France 2-0 to reach their second-ever World Cup final.
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The match was the most-watched of the tournament so far in Spain, attracting an average of 14.6 million viewers across all the channels that broadcast it – La 1, Teledeporte, and DAZN.
This achieved an audience share of 81.3%. Spain’s victory peaked at 19.6 million viewers, representing 41% of the national population.
It also became the most-watched Spain World Cup match since the country’s 1-0 win over the Netherlands in the 2010 final to win the tournament for the first time.
Before Tuesday’s semi-final, the most-viewed World Cup match in Spain was the national team’s 1-0 round of 16 win over Portugal, which drew 12.8 million viewers. The quarter-final against Belgium had an average audience of 11.5 million viewers.
In France, meanwhile, coverage of the country’s defeat on free-to-air broadcaster M6 was watched by 20.2 million viewers, representing a 73% audience share. Viewership for the match peaked at 22.24 million.
This was the highest television audience of the year in France and the largest since the 2022 World Cup.
Meanwhile, BeIN Sports, which holds pay-TV rights in France, attracted 878,000 viewers, with a peak of 1.01 million.
In the quarter-final of this year’s tournament, France’s 2-0 win over Morocco was watched by an average of 16.1 million viewers on M6 (72.8% audience share).
France's semi-final win against Morocco by the same scoreline in 2022 drew an average of 20.7 million viewers on TF1. In the final, which France lost to Argentina on penalties, 25.08 million viewers tuned in across TF1 and BeIN Sports.
In the UK, commercial broadcaster ITV had a peak audience of 14.2 million viewers for Spain’s triumph.
That was the biggest peak audience for a major men’s tournament semi-final that didn’t feature England since Italy vs Spain in Euro 2020, which took place in July 2021.
For the second World Cup semi-final, in which incumbent title holders Argentina beat England 2-1, a peak audience of 24 million watched on the BBC.
The match, shown across the main BBC One channel and BBC iPlayer streaming service, averaged 22.1 million viewers and gave the UK public service broadcaster an 85% share of all TV viewing.
It was the most-watched live television moment of the year across all broadcasters and the biggest live TV audience for a broadcaster since the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy (in 2021).
The semi-final also generated huge digital engagement for the BBC, with the match streamed 12.6 million times across BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport website, and the BBC Sport app.
England face France in the World Cup third-place match on Saturday, which will be shown by the BBC.
The World Cup final will be shown simultaneously in the UK by the BBC and ITV.
In Argentina, the country’s dramatic late win was watched by around 31.8 million viewers on commercial network Telefe.
Overall, the match had a 46.0 rating, meaning that 46% of the country (measurable audience) was watching.
