France: M6 reports 60m World Cup viewers
July 21, 2026

From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris



Ahead of the release of its H1 2026 results, M6, the official FTA broadcaster in France of 54 FIFA World Cup 2026 matches (with beIN Sports covering the event on a pay-TV basis) reports that it attained an audience of 60 million viewers for the tournament across both its linear channel and its M6+ platform. This represents 93 per cent of the national population according to the group’s figures.

The World Cup also saw M6+ achieve its 13 largest historical audience figures and 100 million videos viewed overall, by 11 million active users.


The coverage was almost total among the commercial targets, with close to 100 per cent of 25-49-year-olds and 15-34-year-olds watching the competition. There was a a peak audience of 20.2 million viewers for the France v Spain semi-final on July 14th. The Spain v Argentina final on July 19h=th attracted 12.2 million people, reaching an audience share of 59.2 per cent.

In June, M6 saw its audience share rise by 4.2 points over one month. The group claims the position of ‘leading national channel by averages’ for the entire period from June 11th to July 19th among viewers aged 4 and older and among the under-50s. Over the period, the group claims it achieved the year’s ten highest audience ratings, driven notably by the eight matched played by France. More than 4 million new accounts were also created on M6+.

From a financial point of view, the 2026 World Cup won’t be profitable for the group however. In terms of ad revenues, the income generated before the semi-finals already surpassed the €104 million achieved by France Télévisions during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, to around €110 million according to estimates. The ‘hydration breaks’ accounted for over 20 per cent of match-related ad revenue. According to Kantar Media, €12.4 million was invested by the retail and distribution sector and Google tops the advertisers ranking with €2.99 million invested into 17 spots on its AI Gemini tool.

More widely, the 2026 World Cup reflects a decline compared to the 2022 tournament, when the France v Argentina final on December 19th 2022 was followed by 24.1 million viewers on TF1. The market estimates the average audience per match in 2026 stood at around 5.3 million viewers, a 40 per cent drop compared of the 2018 and 2022 editions.

The can be attributed to the expanded format of 48 teams and 104 matches as well as late kick-off times.

M6 also holds the exclusive FTA rights to the 2030 FIFA World Cup which will coincide with the competition’s centenary.