The first semi-final of the Italian Super Cup performed well on domestic TV in Italy despite the fact it was hosted outside the country once again.
Inter Milan defeated Atalanta 2-0 in front of 16,896 spectators at the King Saud University Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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On Italian broadcaster Canale 5, the game drew 5.4 million average viewers, capturing 25.4% of the national audience.
This figure represents a marked increase on the two semi-finals of the 2024 Supercoppa, which together averaged 4 million viewers with an 18.8% viewership share.
The game also performed better than a number of the finals that took place in Italy over the last decade including 2012 (4.9 million), 2015 (4.6 million), and came close to the 2017 final (5.5 million), despite all three having higher viewership shares.
In total it has been the highest viewed free-to-air match of the 2024-25 Italian soccer season so far, beating the 3.5 million that tuned in to the round-of-16 Coppa Italia fixture between Juventus and Cagliari.
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By GlobalDataMediaset, the operator of Canale 5, picked up the rights to the Supercoppa, as well as the Coppa Italia knockout competition, in 2023, and holds those rights through 2027.
The 2025 edition of the competition is the second consecutive edition to be staged in Saudi Arabia as a four-team tournament, as opposed to a single final fixture.
Serie A has a six-year agreement to host the competition in the Gulf state, of which this is the second year.
Prior to that agreement, the league staged two editions of the Supercoppa in Saudi in 2019. The first game was played in Jeddah in January 2019, with the second in Riyadh at the end of that year. The 2020 edition would also have come to the country but was held in Italy due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Games have been held at 10pm local time in Saudi Arabia, to counteract the two-hour time difference between the country and Italy so games are broadcast in Italy at 8pm.
The league has faced scrutiny over its long-term agreement to stage the competition in Saudi Arabia, given the country’s human rights record.
Serie A came in for criticism over the first game as it was held just months after dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Serie A had also come under pressure to move the Supercoppa out of Saudi Arabia from BeIN Sports, the Qatar-based pay-TV broadcaster, which had clashed with the country over its harboring of beoutQ, the pirate broadcaster of a range of sports properties, including Italy's top flight.
However, Serie A's president Paolo Dal Pino insisted it would honor the five-year contract, adding the league would work with the Ministry of Sports in Saudi Arabia on initiatives relating to human rights.
At the time, he told Rai’s Radio Anch'io: “The question of human rights? We have a contract signed two or three years ago when I wasn't there.
“There is a relationship of intense collaboration with the Saudi Arabian federation on women's football and precisely in going in the direction of opening up human rights.”
Since 2009, multiple editions of the Supercoppa have been held abroad. China has hosted three, while Qatar has staged two. Saudi Arabia is now hosting its fifth.
