The final of this year’s Euros drew in over 23.8m adult viewers across coverage on BBC1 and ITV1, making it (unsurprisingly) the highest viewed match of the tournament. Despite this, viewership was lower than for the previous final against Italy, which delivered just over 31m viewers at its peak.
Admittedly, in 2021 fans had been patiently waiting an extra year for a good festival of football due to the pandemic. But this year’s decline isn’t just seen in the viewing of the final, as all adult linear impacts were down 14% across the whole tournament.
Although the quality of football played by the England squad was a bit more boring than the last tournament, it’s unlikely to have been the main driving factor in the decline.
Research from Thinkbox shows that, from 2022-23, linear TV viewing declined 6% while BVOD viewing increased by 23%. Although this trend is mostly driven by catch-up and on-demand viewing, there is a growing trend in watching live broadcast content through BVOD services such as ITVX. Furthermore, in 2021 we were just beginning to return to normality after Covid. Watching the game down your local wasn’t as popular then. Crowds gathered freely this year, with fewer people watching from home, where BARB records its impression data.
Another interesting takeaway from this tournament isn’t just where and how sports fans got their football fix, but also on which channel. In 2021, the final was viewed on the BBC by 81% of total viewers. In this tournament, this figure dropped to 74% with ITV increasing their viewing share by 7 percentage points.
Despite slight linear declines, strong overall viewership of the Euros has been a cherry on the cake for ITV, who have seen their revenue increase 10% year on year, despite total viewing across H1 being down 7.7% for all adult viewing. It would seem that ITVX has helped keep the ship afloat with an increase of 12% digital advertising revenue, as well as a 15% increase in viewing hours and a 17% increase in active users.
While there has been increased viewing across the Euros, this does buck trends that we have been seeing across regular viewing. Ofcom has recently reported that, for the first time, less than 50% of 16–24-year-olds tune into linear TV in an average week. This audience isn’t totally disappearing from the AV landscape, though, as this is one of the audiences who consume the most VOD content.
Overall, we are seeing viewing continue to remain steady across the AV landscape with big appointment to view programming like the Euros drawing in large numbers to linear TV, although viewing trends from this tournament do suggest that there is a growing appetite to watch through online services. This makes it more important than ever for advertisers to consider their linear vs BVOD investment to ensure they are delivering the best reach possible.
