France beat Austria 1-0 to begin their Euro 2024 campaign. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Strong early viewership of soccer’s 2024 UEFA European Championship has continued across the continent, with French viewership of the country’s opening match against Austria reaching 11.25 million viewers on commercial network TF1.

The game had a 47.6% audience share in the country but fell short of the totals attributed to France’s first game of Euro 2020 (played in 2021), in which it drew 15.1 million viewers and a 57.6% audience share on the M6 network.

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As one of the pre-tournament favorites, France is expected to make a deep run in the tournament that could see viewership grow even further as the stakes rise.

TF1 often performs strongly in sports broadcast viewership, drawing its largest audience of the year in 2023 when 16.5 million people tuned in to watch hosts France end their Rugby World Cup run against defending champions South Africa.

Despite falling compared to 2021, France vs Austria viewership was in line with a strong trend of interest across Europe’s top soccer nations for the opening round of Euro 2024 fixtures.

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In host nation Germany, an average domestic audience of 22.5 million watched their national team romp to a 5-1 win over Scotland on public-service broadcaster ZDF, with a 69% market share in the nation.

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In the UK, the same game peaked at 10.9 million viewers on commercial broadcaster ITV, the highest peak figure for a tournament opener on ITV or the BBC in the UK since the start of the 2014 World Cup.

STV, the commercial free-to-air broadcaster in Scotland, drew 1.79 million average viewers and a peak audience of 1.38 million.

There was an average viewership of 10.5 million for England's 1-0 victory over victory and a peak of 15 million – representing a 60% market share. The match was also streamed 3.5 million times on the BBC iPlayer platform.