The banner year for ESPN’s broadcast of Euro 2020 doesn’t seem to be slowing down as quarterfinal matches get underway. ESPN announced that Round of 16 matches delivered an average audience of 1,816,000 viewers. That marks a 38 percent increase compared to 1,317,000 viewers for the same matches in 2016.
The matches took place from last Saturday through Tuesday and featured the most-watched event of the whole tournament thus far. Belgium-Portugal featuring the world’s most prolific international scorer in Christiano Ronaldo notched 2,653,000 viewers on ABC.
Zooming out from this year’s tournament alone, the match was the fifth most-watched European Championship event since the network began airing the games in 2008. The three top matches were championship finals, while the fourth spot belongs to an Italy-England quarterfinal match from EURO 2012. The 1-0 Belgium victory continued a strong overall tournament showing.
Through 44 EURO 2020 matches (Group Stage and Round of 16), the average audience across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 is 1,063,000 viewers. That number represents a 29% increase over 822,400 viewers for comparable matches in 2016.
European club soccer has steadily grown in popularity over the last decade in the United States, plus, this is a prime event to wager on. The tournament owns all of the daytime sports real estate right now, save for a few MLB day games here and there. Succinct matches played three times each day throughout the group stage made it a routine event to open daily gambling.
Across the pond, the beautiful game is still as popular as ever, with 20.6 million viewers tuning in to BBC One’s coverage of England-Germany this week. It’ll be a long time (if ever) before soccer reaches numbers like that in the states, but the tides are rising. ESPN invested over 140 hours of live coverage into this event as the U.S. distributor, and that decision is paying big dividends.