Football restarts, adapts to empty stadiums, but finds its audience on TV. The Italian Cup was the first to return to the field: on 12 June the Juventus-Milan semifinal was followed on Rai1 by 8.3 million spectators equal to 33.96% share, 200 thousand spectators and 2 percentage points more than the match forward, played on 13 February (8 million 95 thousand with 30.85%, always on the Rai flagship). The other semifinal, Napoli-Inter, collected 7.1 million and 32.35% on 13 June (up on the first leg, followed by 6.9 million with 26.37%). The final, Napoli-Juventus, glued 10.2 million fans, 61% men, to the TV, notes the Osservatorio dello Studio Frasi, which also reports that 503 thousand people followed the game away from home, as friends.
The blues led by Rino Gattuso have won on the Olimpico pitch and on TV. Indeed, on the small screen the Neapolitans played at home: if the average share was 39.6%, the Campania region reached 59.7% against 49.1% in Piedmont. The Italian Cup was awarded on penalties: on the last penalty, listening was 10.6 million, equal to 45.4% (which in Campania reaches 65.8%). The eternal passion for football rejuvenates the Rai1 audience: the average age of those who followed the final - the Studio Frasi still indicates - is 53 years old, 8 years less than the Rai flagship audience in June 2020 Contacts grew by 7 and a half million compared to the network average. Also noteworthy is the increase in audience of advertising breaks, with an average of 7.5 million viewers for the final and a peak of over 10 million - levels from the Sanremo Festival - for self-promotion of the network and the Coca Cola spot. Napoli-Juve collected 3 million more spectators than the 2019 final, Atalanta-Lazio (followed by 7.3 million with 28.69% on Rai1), slightly less than that played in 2018, Juve-Milan (10.6 million with 39.22%): a confirmation of the Bianconeri's ability to mobilize a greater number of fans throughout Italy.
As for Serie A, restarted on 20 June, the Phrase Study compared the ratings of the first 28 days 2019-20 (including the one played on 28 June) with the corresponding days of the 2018-2019 championship: gross listening (i.e. the sum audience of all matches) is higher than 178 million (against 145 million a year ago). In the last two days, listening to football also on Sky brand channels is higher than in the previous season, with almost always double-digit percentages: this is the case of Udinese-Atalanta, Turin-Cagliari, Parma-Inter and Direct goals; albeit slightly (-2.7%) Juventus lost in the match against Lecce. Different the speech for Dazn that does not make public the overall values of use of the platform (only the data of the matches transmitted on the Sky platform are known) nor the Auditel data of the devices (smart TV if connected, tablet, PC, smartphone). The most watched match on Dazn of the last two days is Milan-Rome (559,020 spectators on Sky platform). On Sky channels the most popular is Bologna-Juventus (1.4 million viewers). The most watched match ever of the championship remains Inter-Juventus on 6 October, with 3.2 million spectators and 76 thousand at the stadium. The return was held behind closed doors on March 8 (we were at the start of the lockdown) with 3 million viewers.
"Football remains one of the most loved 'genres', it does not suffer from the public's disaffection, despite the anomaly of a championship which, in order to recover the lost days, spreads the matches in 'abnormal' days and times", notes Francesco Siliato, head of the Phrases Study Observatory. "With the empty stadiums, perhaps we could have expected a greater increase in the television audience. We will have to see at this point if those who cannot go to the stadium decide, if they are not already, to subscribe to pay TV. It will naturally depend on the interest in the championship: the more uncertain the verdicts, the higher the public interest ".