For the fourth and final time, Didier Deschamps revealed his list of players called up for a World Cup. Thursday evening, the big announcement from the French team coach was followed by 5.37 million viewers on TF1.
Obviously, this is a very good result for the 8 p.m. news presented by Gilles Bouleau, with 30.3% audience share according to Médiamétrie. Except that this is the lowest score in this area since 2014 and the first World Cup contested by the Blues with this coach.
For comparison, the announcement of the French selection for the 2022 World Cup attracted 7.3 million viewers on the first channel. Four years earlier, there were 6.53 million to know the players selected to go to Russia.
List of the Blues, the reasons for the drop in audience on the news
The general erosion of the news audience in recent years can partly justify this drop in audience. Younger people have massively turned to social networks and streaming platforms to follow this type of announcement in real time.
Around 90% of the French group was known before the announcement, with few real unknowns. The fact that this is Didier Deschamps’ last list for a major tournament may also have created less excitement than in the past.
