2023-08-09 11:48:20
2023 Women’s Football World CupfileMore than four out of ten television viewers watched Les Bleues’ victory over the Atlas Lionesses.
They had been promised an absence of public, impossible schedules in full summer holidays, invisibility. It is clear that this is not the case. Some 5.2 million viewers followed Tuesday, at 1 p.m., on M6 the big victory of the Blue against the Lionesses of the Atlas of Morocco (4-0) in the round of 16 of the World Cup organized this year in Oceania, according to the Médiamétrie figures published this Wednesday, August 9.
This is the audience record for the French team since the start of the competition. France – Morocco achieved no less than 45.7% audience share (PDA). This means that more than four out of ten television viewers at that time were watching Eugénie Le Sommer guide Les Bleues to qualification. The next meeting is set for Saturday 9 a.m. (Paris time) where the French will face Australia in the quarter-finals, a more early schedule than for their previous meetings.
Their first three matches, in the group stage, broadcast at midday were respectively watched by 3.4 million (France – Jamaica on M6 on July 23), 4.3 million (France-Brazil on France 2 on July 29 ) and 3.9 million (Panama – France on France 2 on August 2) viewers. Public attention is growing.
The threat of a black screen has however long weighed on this 2023 Women’s World Cup, organized in Australia and New Zealand, due to the reluctance of the audiovisual broadcasters of the Big Five (France, England, Spain, Italy and Germany) to take out the checkbook in the face of audience fallout that they considered very uncertain, particularly given the time difference. But behind these polite accounting arguments there is still and above all a distrust of football played by women which, according to them, does not attract enough crowds.
A record audience in 2019
At the end of a vast agreement announced in mid-June by Fifa concerning around thirty countries, France Télévisions and M6 had ended up acquiring, over the wire, the rights to the event, allowing it to be broadcast unencrypted in the Hexagon. Faced with this incredible blockage, on May 25, the top scorer of Les Bleues until 2020, Marinette Pichon, had even launched a petition signed by more than 128,000 people to call on “sports fans, [les] citizens committed to gender equality” to “affirm the right of the Blues to coverage worthy of the name”.
The audience record for the French women’s football team dates back to June 2019, during the World Cup in France, with nearly 12 million viewers (TF1 and Canal +) for the victorious round of 16 against Brazil. This French edition, followed by 1.12 billion viewers, was a great success. Five matches of Les Bleues had climbed among the six best annual audiences of TF1.
However, these audiences remain much lower than those achieved by the French men’s team, which enjoys a more established audience and benefits from incomparable media exposure. His round of 16 victory against Poland (3-1) at the Mondial-2022 was watched by 14.3 million viewers on Sunday December 4 in the middle of the afternoon.
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