Manchester City clinched their first Champions League title against Inter Milan on Saturday night. A meeting expected by citizen supporters but less by French viewers. The audience for the match on TF1 felt the effects.
Manchester City-Inter Milan, a surprise Champions League final that probably deserved a look. Unfortunately, the show was not great on Saturday evening in Istanbul with a closed match, few chances and a sluggish success of the English 1-0. Observers had expected a better show for most of them, especially given City’s attacking form this season. However, French viewers had much less expectation than them, as revealed by the audiences for the meeting on the TF1 channel, which broadcast the event free of charge.
Worst audience for a C1 final on TF1
Indeed, the first channel only brought together 3.392 million people in front of the screen on Saturday evening according to estimates by Mediamétrie. Enough to place TF1 in second place for the evening behind a France 3 TV movie The Curse of the Lys (3.8 million). If Canal+ also broadcast the C1 final and captured a share of the French audience, these figures remain disappointing.
Audiences: What score for the Champions League final on TF1? https://t.co/AjXnr0wLAC pic.twitter.com/GUmB1s9V9l
— puremedias.com (@puremedias) June 11, 2023
As a reminder, last season in the same case of a TF1-Canal + co-broadcast, the first channel attracted 5.9 million people to follow Liverpool-Real Madrid at the Stade de France. Never before had TF1 had so few audiences for a Champions League final in its history. Inter Milan also did not succeed at TF1 since the second worst audience on the channel for a C1 final dated back to 2010. 4.3 million people had watched the coronation of the Interists against Bayern in Madrid. 2023 is the third-worst audience score for a free-to-air Champions League final. Only Liverpool-Tottenham in 2019 (2.5 million on BFMTV) and…Manchester City-Chelsea 2021 (2.4 million on RMC Story) did worse.
