German public broadcater ARD "recorded close to 18 million viewers for its broadcast of Tuesday's Euro 2016 quarterfinal," according to Robert Meyer of QUOTENMETER. The game between Portugal and Wales drew 17.78 million viewers starting at 9pm. The number translated into a market share of 55%. In the target demographic 14-49, Portugal's 2-0 win attracted 7.21 million viewers and had a 59.8% share. Earlier in the day, ARD showed the fifth stage of this year's Tour de France. The stage, which was won by BMC rider Greg Van Avermaet, attracted 940,000 viewers and had a 8.8% share. In the target demo, the stage obtained a 4.9% share as 160,000 viewers tuned in (QUOTENMETER, 7/7).
ACROSS THE CHANNEL: In London, Patrick Foster reported "half of all viewers" of Andy Murray’s Wimbledon quarterfinal against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga "abandoned the match" for Wales’s Euro 2016 tie, as broadcasters "counted the cost of the clash between two of the biggest sporting events of the year."
Official BBC figures, supplied by overnights.tv, show that 7 million people "were watching Murray’s match against the Frenchman on BBC One, in the minutes leading up to the 8pm kick-off of Wales’s clash with Portugal."
But in the 10 minutes after Gareth Bale’s Wales got underway on ITV, the Wimbledon audience "crashed by half, to 3.5 million viewers, as viewers flooded over to the commercial channel." ITV said that an average of 13.4 million viewers "watched the football, including those who watched on ITV1+1, with the match peaking at 15.4 million" (TELEGRAPH, 7/7).
TOUR DE FRANCE: L’ÉQUIPE reported the fifth stage of the Tour de France, broadcast on France 2, “drew an average audience of 2.9 million French viewers and translated into a 35.3% market share.” The beginning of the stage was watched by 1.8 million viewers, translating to a 19.5% market share. A peak audience of 3.9 million viewers watched Van Avermaet take the yellow jersey (L’ÉQUIPE, 7/7).
