(Reuters) – The 2023 Women’s World Cup final attracted record television viewing figures for women’s football, capping off a tournament which had also drawn a record number of fans at the stadiums.
Spain defeated England 1-0 in the final on Sunday in Sydney, and record numbers tuned in to watch in both nations. Here are some of the TV and attendance figures released to date for the tournament co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand:
FINAL TV FIGURES IN SPAIN AND ENGLAND
* The BBC announced a peak audience of 12 million viewers on BBC One, higher than the men’s Wimbledon final in July which peaked at 11.3 million.
* The World Cup final was also covered by ITV, the combined peak hit a reported 14.4 million on Sunday, according to figures from ratings compiler Barb.
*This is a record TV audience in the UK for a Women’s World Cup final.
*The record for a women’s game in the UK still stands at a peak of 17.4 million from the 2022 Euros final, won by England.
* In Spain, 5.6 million watched the final, and it peaked at 7.4 million viewers, with data published by Barlovento Comunicacion saying that 56.2% of the Spanish television audience was male.
*The screen share in Spain for the final was 65.7%, peaking at 71.1%.
*This is the highest ever TV audience in Spain for a women’s football game.
TV VIEWERS IN AUSTRALIA
* In Australia the final attracted a high of 5.54 million viewers.
* Australia’s semi-final loss to England had an average TV audience of 7.2 million on Channel Seven, with a peak of 11.15 million. These are the highest figures ever recorded by research firm OzTAM, since it launched in 2001.
GLOBAL TELEVISION AUDIENCE
* Television figures are set to break previous records at the Women’s World Cup. In 2019, 1.12 billion people tuned in globally to watch the tournament according to a FIFA survey.
* For the 2023 edition, FIFA chief women’s football officer Sarai Brennan said before the tournament kicked off that it expected to reach an audience of over 2 billion viewers.
* China recorded the highest TV audience for a single game at this year’s World Cup with 53.9 million tuning in for their loss to England.
* The 2019 Women’s World Cup final had an average TV audience of 82.18 million.
* The 2022 Men’s World Cup final achieved a global reach of almost 1.5 billion viewers.
RECORD CROWDS
* Stadium crowds at the 2023 tournament hit a total of over 1.9 million fans. The previous record was 1.35 million set at the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada.
* The average crowd in Australia and New Zealand was 30,911. This beat the previous record set at the 2015 where the average was 26,000 per game.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes)
