An audience of more than 20 million watched hosts Germany begin their UEFA European Championship campaign with a huge win over Scotland, while the men's soccer match delivered the highest peak audience of any opening match of a major international soccer tournament in a decade in the UK.
Germany’s 5-1 win over Scotland in the Euro 2024 opener in Munich on Friday evening drew an average of 22.5 million viewers on public-service broadcaster ZDF.
The match achieved a market share of 69% in the host nation.
Public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF have rights to show 34 games live, including all of Germany's games, the opening game, the semi-finals, and the final under a sub-licensing agreement with main rightsholder Deutsche Telekom.
Domestic listed events legislation means that Germany's matches, the opening game, semi-finals, and the final at the Euros have to be made available on free-to-air TV.
Germany’s next two group games, against Hungary and Switzerland, will be shown on ARD.
Meanwhile, UK commercial broadcaster ITV drew a peak audience of 10.4 million for Germany’s big opening night win on its main linear channel and ITVX streaming service.
An average of 9.1 million viewers watched the match and an average of 6 million tuned in for the overall coverage.
The match delivered the highest peak audience of a tournament kick-off on ITV or the BBC since the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, while the coverage average is the highest for an opener of the Euros since France v Romania at Euro 2016.
STV, the commercial free-to-air broadcaster in Scotland, drew 1.79 million average viewers and a peak audience of 1.38 million.
The coverage was the channel’s best-watched program of 2024 and netted the biggest audience for any channel in Scotland so far this year.
Over on STV Player, with 524,000 streams, it was the platform's highest-ever match (compared with 494,000 streams for England's match against Denmark at Euro 2020).
Elsewhere, England’s 1-0 win in their Euro 2024 opener against Serbia attracted a peak audience of 15 million on the public-service BBC.
This marks the highest peak audience of any TV program in the UK in 2024.
There was an average viewership of 10.5 million for England's narrow victory - a 60% market share. The match was also streamed 3.5 million times on the BBC iPlayer platform.
England’s next game, against Denmark, will also be shown on the BBC, which is sharing rights with ITV.
In other major European markets, reigning European champions Italy got their campaign off to a winning start with a 2-1 over Albania on Saturday which drew in 10.4 million viewers (55.7% share) on Rai Uno, the channel owned by public broadcaster Rai.
The match was also shown by pay-TV giant Sky Italia, which added an extra 1.14 million viewers, upping the combined market share to 61.7%.
In the same group, Spain beat Croatia 3-0 earlier on Saturday, with over 5 million viewers tuning in on La1, the main channel of Spanish public broadcaster RTVE. The audience peaked at 5.66 million and equated to a 50% market share.
The second match of the tournament and the early kick-off on Saturday saw Switzerland beat Hungary 3-1, with the audience in Switzerland peaking at 1.15 million (84.2% share) on SRF Zwei, the German-language channel of the Swiss public broadcaster SRG SSR. There were an additional 550,000 live streams on SRF’s online platforms.
The Netherlands also won their opening match, coming from behind to beat Poland 2-1 on Sunday, with public broadcaster NOS attracting an audience of 4.7 million.
