Sports score in 2019 despite few major tournaments
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 19 December 2019

The sports broadcasting world never likes years that end in odd numbers yet research from Médiamétrie division Glance has shown that 2019 has generated respectable numbers with only the FIFA Women’s World Cup and Rugby World Cup as major global events.

In the 2019 edition of the Yearly Sport Key Facts report, the analyst notes that the year in general saw broadcasting rights being transferred away from free-to-air channels towards to pay-TV channels, with general interest channels broadcasting fewer hours of sports. This was especially the case for flagship events such as Champions League football and Formula 1 racing. The study also observed strong expansion into the sports rights marketplace by internet giants and OTT platforms.

Glance calculated that in France and in Germany, the number of hours of sports offered on the free-to-air channels has fallen by 39% and 25% respectively since the 2017-18 season, which included the Football World Cup in Russia and the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Yet it added that drawing comparison with the previous season including an odd-numbered year, 2016-17, the decline was less pronounced with 21% fewer sports programmes aired in France and just 8% fewer in Germany.

Yet the study found that TV was still number one when it comes to following a local or international sporting event like the Rugby World Cup and in particular the Women’s World Cup. Indeed the latter generated unprecedented audiences around the world and conferred global fame to the likes of Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan.

In the host nation France, the top five sports audiences from the season were for matches during the Women’s World Cup championship. The quarter-final between France and the US attracted the highest audience so far in 2019 for any programming genre, with more than 10.7 million viewers on television and a 49.6% audience share on TF1. In the Netherlands, the final between the home squad and the US attracted 5.5 million TV viewers and a market share of 87.2% on NPO 1, also the highest sporting audience over the season. In the US, 14.1 million American viewers sat down in front of the television to witness their national team’s triumph gaining a 26.9% audience share.

Glance’s research also showed that other sports like basketball, handball or winter sports also proved very successful. In Canada, the Toronto Raptors’ victory against the Golden State Warriors in the 2019 NBA basketball finals captured 6 out of the 10 top audiences during the season were for the final six games. The last game in the series was watched by 5.1 million viewers for an audience share of 39.1% on TSN, the highest audience for sport over the study period.