The UEFA European Football Championship (EURO 2000) staged in Belgium and The Netherlands confirmed itself as the world’s second largest football tournament with a gross cumulative audience in excess of seven billion individuals according to leading sponsorship research company Sponsorship Research International (SRi). This represents an increase of around 5% on the corresponding figure for EURO 96.

The tournament was aired in 170 countries with the final between Italy and France being shown in all territories. The total worldwide broadcast time amounted to more than 10 thousand hours, an average of 63 hours per broadcast country, and an average of 345 hours per match.

The ‘big five’ of UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and France accounted for around one billion of the total cumulative audience. In The Netherlands, viewing levels were vast with the Holland v Italy semi-final being watched by 50% of the Dutch population and the final by 27%.

In Belgium, the opening match between Belgium and Sweden was viewed by nearly one-third of the Belgian population while the final drew an audience amounting to more than a quarter of the population. France and Italy each attracted audience levels in excess of 21 million for the final – these numbers representing around 40% of the potential audience for each country. Semi-finalists Portugal saw one-third of the nation tuning into their match against France, whilst in Romania, around a third of people watched each of their team’s four matches.

The television coverage and audience report produced for EURO 2000 involved extensive investigations undertaken by SRi into the audiences achieved for this world class sporting event. The resulting seven billion is based on programme only coverage (i.e. excluding news items) and is derived from recognised audience measurement sources such as Nielsen, TN Sofres, Mediametrie, GfK, Ibope etc.

For further information, please contact:
Chris Jones
SRi UK
Tel: 020 7616 1125
Fax: 020 7616 1115
chris.jones@islworld.com
www.sponsorship-research.com