Temps de lecture : 5 min 28 s

The summer of 2024 was marked by a series of sporting competitions: Euro 2024, the Tour de France, the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. Live broadcasts of sporting events have a strong appeal to the public and these events came out on top due to a combination of favourable factors. Analysis of the significant TV audiences of this summer sporting sequence.

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games : highest ever audience

The sporting events of summer 2024 broke all records! Among them, the Olympic Games and Euro 2024 achieved the top 10 audiences for the year. These were exclusively prime-time events.

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Source : Médiamétrie - Base : Individus 4 ans et + France Entière

Isabelle Maurice, Director of Studies, Monitoring and Forecasting at Médiamétrie said : « Thanks to these exceptional events, television audiences this summer have significantly exceeded those of previous summers, when we usually observe a decline in audiences due to holidays, the nice weather and less attractive programming. The audience of 15-24 year olds even increased compared to the period from January to May, which demonstrates the attractiveness of televised sport for young adults ».

The public has shown a strong appetite for sports programmes on television. Over the summer period – from 14 June to 8 September – Euro 2024, the Tour de France, the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games represented 18% of all programmes watched on television, while they made up 2% of the total content offered by the channels.

Public enthusiasm for sports programmes on television, online and out-of-home

The first sporting event of the summer, the European Football Championship, which was held in Germany this year, was broadcast on TF1, M6 and BeIN SPORTS between 14 June and 14 July. 54.3 million viewers kept in touch with the competition on TF1 and M6. 15% of the average audience watched outside the home, which even rose to 21% for the final in which Spain defeated England. Between January and May, the audience generated out-of-homehome represented an average of 6% of the total audience.

The Tour de France took place from 29 June to 21 July, with the stages being broadcast on France 2, France 3 and Eurosport. The enthusiasm for this competition is undeniable: 43.2 million viewers watched the Tour de France on France 2 or France 3. The Tour de France significantly increased channel audiences during afternoon broadcasts: it increased threefold on France 2 and twofold on France 3.

The flagship event of the summer, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, were the subject of an exceptional system on France Télévisions. The group's channels – France 2, France 3 and France 5 - offered around 50 hours of programmes per day, first live and then rebroadcast at night. In addition, there were over 250 hours of broadcasting on the digital platform, as well as the daily show Quels Jeux! , which aired at 11 pm.

The Olympic Games started very strongly on television with the phenomenal success of the opening ceremony on Friday 26 July, which achieved the highest historical audience for Médiamat: an average of 24.4 million viewers watched it, representing an audience share of 83.1%. 

The closing ceremony, which took place on the evening of Sunday 11 August, also attracted a large audience: 17.9 million viewers on average and a 76.7% audience share. 

The entire competition was widely followed on the France Télévisions group channels. A total of 59.6 million viewers were in contact with the event.

Across all channels, the audience for the competition outside the home was significantly higher than at other times in the year: it represented an average of 20%, reaching 23% of the total audience in the last days of the competition.

According to Isabelle Maurice, « young adults watched the events en masse: 99% of 15-49 year olds followed the Olympic Games on television ». 

Even viewers without TVs watched the events broadcast on television: 85% of them were in contact with the Olympic Games on television. 

The Paralympic Games were broadcast on France 2 and France 3, as well as on the France.tv platform. 51.4 million viewers were in contact with the competition on France 2 and France 3. The audience share increased by 5 points over the period compared to the January-May period. The Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games attracted 10.5 million viewers and the Closing Ceremony 7.9 million.

The appeal of national teams, records and certain key disciplines

The Euro Football semi-final between Spain and France produced the best television performance of this edition, attracting 16.1 million viewers on TF1. Alyssa Normant, Senior Research Officer at Médiamétrie, said « the French team's matches and the final phases of the competition were the driving forces of the audience in France ».

For the Tour de France, viewers were particularly involved during the mountain stages: 4.4 million viewers watched the Nice to Col de la Couillole stage on 20 July, the event’s best viewing figures. 

At the Olympic Games, five sports were “over-consumed”: swimming, judo, fencing, table tennis and gymnastics. With the exception of basketball, team sports were under-consumed in comparison with the offer proposed.

Swimming and its hero Léon Marchand achieved the best performances both in sporting terms and in terms of audience: an average of 5.7 million people watched Olympic swimming, representing a 38.1% audience share. 4.4 million watched judo (40.4% audience share), 4.3 million watched mountain biking (36.6%), 3.6 million watched fencing (25.6%) and 2.7 million watched table tennis (25.5%).

2 August was also a record-breaking evening in terms of audience! The 3 best audiences of the Games were recorded that evening on France 2. First of all in swimming: 13.2 million viewers watched Léon Marchand climb to the top of the podium to receive his gold medal, representing an audience share of 59.9%. 12.1 million watched the BMX final (56.1% audience share), which saw 3 Frenchmen take the medals. Finally, 11.9 million viewers held their breath as Léon Marchand took gold in the 200m medley final with a 53.8% audience share.

The best audience of the Paralympic Games was achieved for the T13^[i]100m final on September 1^st: 4.9 million viewers watched it (27.9% audience share). The men's blind football final came in second with 4.2 million viewers (24.4% audience share). Finally, in third place, 4 million viewers (26.3% audience share) watched the S13^[i]

100 m backstroke final, in which French swimmer Alex Portal won the bronze medal.

Sports panel shows covering the competitions and broadcast in the second part of the evening also achieved high audience scores, especially among the biggest consumers of TV.

Isabelle Maurice concluded by saying : « in the summer of 2024, a number of factors contributed to the success of competitions on television: the excitement of being the host country for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, combined with the lack of time difference, enthusiasm for group viewing out-of-home in bars and fan zones, the holiday period, prime-time sessions, the fortunes of national athletes, especially when they go far in competitions, the prospect of records, the pulling power of the disciplines and the extent of the sports offering proposed by broadcasters ».

Laure Osmanian Molinero