\n\tThe 2026 FIFA World Cup once again demonstrated the value of home-team interest to broadcasters, with television audiences across Europe skyrocketing when national teams were still alive in the tournament before declining after their elimination. Yet, fans still turned up in force for the July 19 final opposing Spain to Argentina, proving that while national pride drives the biggest spikes, a good World Cup can stand on its own as not just a powerful live television event, but a cultural one as well.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe match attracted a raft of stars, including Justin Bieber, who performed at halftime, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet with his father Marc and girlfriend Kylie Jenner, Tom Cruise, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, David and Victoria Beckham, Serena Williams, Tom Brady, Carlos Alcaraz, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, underscoring the World Cup\u2019s reach beyond sport.<\/p>\n
\n\tSpain, which won the World Cup 1-0, unsurprisingly delivered the tournament\u2019s largest audience ever recorded in the country and the\u00a0second-most-watched TV event in Spanish history, surpassed only by the penalty shootout in Spain\u2019s Euro 2012 semi-final against Portugal.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs Spaniards around the country sat in anguish at Spain\u2019s seeming inability to convert its slew of scoring chances in goals, the final averaged\u00a015.7 million viewers\u00a0and an extraordinary\u00a087.1% audience share\u00a0across RTVE\u2019s La 1, regional broadcaster 3Cat, La 2 and DAZN, reaching a cumulative\u00a020.1 million people. <\/p>\n
\n\tSpain\u2019s media have been quick to draw conclusion to the triumph. \u201cIt\u2019s not difficult to see in this team, in the diversity of its players\u2019 origins, in the character of its stars and its style of play and ability to connect with fans and citizens across-the-board a reflection of what this country is and can be in the 21st century,\u201d said editorial on Monday in Spanish newspaper El Pa\u00eds.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe contrast with the beaten semi-finalists was telling. France\u2019s audience took the steepest hit once\u00a0\u2018Les Bleus\u2019\u00a0were knocked out. France\u2019s semi-final against Spain delivered the country\u2019s biggest television audience of the year with\u00a020.2 million viewers\u00a0and a\u00a073% audience share on M6, according to Mediametrie; but by the time the final rolled around, the audience had fallen to\u00a012.24 million\u00a0with a\u00a059.2% share. That\u2019s roughly\u00a08 million fewer viewers\u00a0and a loss of almost\u00a014 audience-share points\u00a0once French hopes had ended.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe U.K. proved slightly less fickle. England\u2019s semi-final defeat to Argentina averaged 22.1 million viewers and peaked at 24 million on BBC One, making it the UK\u2019s biggest television broadcast of the year so far. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe final, despite England getting beaten, still averaged\u00a013.9 million viewers, peaked at\u00a015.8 million, and commanded a\u00a064% audience share\u00a0across BBC One and iPlayer. ITV viewership reportedly peaked at 3.4 million. The drop-off was modest compared with France\u2019s, suggesting British viewers were a little more willing to stick around once their own team had exited.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn Italy, where the home team failed to even qualify for the tournament, audiences flocked to the Spain-Argentina final. The match dominated in linear TV prime time on state broadcaster RAI\u2019s RAI-1 channel with roughly 12.5 million viewers and an average 65% share that rose to 74% during the extra time. <\/p>\n
\n\tIn the U.S., the tournament\u2019s strong performance on Fox<\/a> has already stirred talk of the next fight over FIFA\u2019s media rights, with reports suggesting streamers like Netflix<\/a>, YouTube and Apple could enter the mix. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said at a Fanatics Fest conference in New York that Disney-owned ESPN is interested in bidding for U.S. broadcast rights to the next World Cup.<\/p>\n Fox paid $485 million for the rights to the 2026 tournament, and together with Spanish-language partner Telemundo is expected to pull in roughly $850 million in advertising revenue \u2014 with Fox alone reportedly earning as much as $250 million from hydration-break commercials, according to SportsPro<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 FIFA World Cup once again demonstrated the value of home-team interest to broadcasters, with television audiences…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43586,4,48796,485],"class_list":["post-98438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-europe","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-europe","tag-fox","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}