beIN Sports, the leading sports broadcaster in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), has set a new record with an unprecedented cumulative viewership of more than 1.2 billion views of its multilingual coverage of the month-long UEFA European Championships (Euro 2024) held in Germany.
For context, the broadcaster’s coverage of the Euro 2020 tournament generated 0.96 billion views across the same numbers of matches, meaning this year marks a 27 per cent rise in views.
Sunday’s final, the last of 51 games held between 14 June and 14 July, saw Spain beat England 2-1 to clinch a record fourth continental title courtesy of a late goal by Mikel Oyarzabal.
The match saw more than 95.2 million viewers tune in, making it the most-watched game of the tournament. For further context, the broadcaster’s coverage of the Euro 2020 final between Italy and England attracted 64.4 million viewers, meaning this year marks a nearly 50 per cent rise in viewers.
The two semi-finals in particular attracted huge audiences, with more than 54.1 million fans tuning in to watch a 16-year-old Lamine Yamal become the youngest goal-scorer in the competition’s history as Spain beat France, before 54.4 million watched England’s Ollie Watkins decide a tense encounter with the Netherlands in stoppage time. Across the whole tournament, 23.8 million viewers watched each match on average, which was over 5 million more viewers per match versus the average for Euro 2020.
beIN’s cross-platform digital coverage, featuring minute-by-minute match updates, post-match highlights, interviews and special studio coverage saw its social media platforms reach record numbers. Total cumulative impressions across beIN’s social media channels soared to 2.6 billion, reflecting a 261.8% increase compared to 718 million in 2020. Meanwhile, cumulative video views across its platforms saw a 518% increase from 178 million in 2020 to 1.1 billion views recorded during the 2024 tournament.
