When Germany and Scotland kick off UEFA Euro 2024 on Friday at 9:00 PM Central European Summer Time (3:00 PM EDT), European football fans won’t be the only ones glued to their TV screens, as hundreds of millions of people across the globe are looking forward to the month-long competition.
Since Europe is the epicenter of the football world, fans from all over the world will tune in when footballing powerhouses France, Germany, Spain, England and 20 other nations clash in the European championship played in 10 cities across Germany over the next four weeks. According to UEFA, Euro 2020 (played in 2021 due to Covid-19) reached a cumulative live match audience of 5.2 billion, with 1.9 billion people watching at least a couple of minutes of live coverage from the tournament. The final between England and Italy alone was watched by an average of 328 million people, far outstripping the global reach of the Super Bowl.
The results of a recent survey conducted by TGM Research underline the tournament’s global appeal. 57 percent of the more than 20,000 respondents from 26 countries expressed their interest in the upcoming competition. Interestingly, American soccer fans are by far the least enthusiastic about the Euros illustrating the country’s outlier role in terms of soccer’s role in the sporting landscape. According to Statista Consumer Insights, just 27 percent of U.S. sports fans follow soccer, which is a far cry from the level of interest observed in large parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa.
