Nearly 5.7 million viewers followed Saturday morning on France 2 the breathless quarter-final between the women's football France team and Australia, finally lost by the Blues after a penalty shootout, according to figures published Sunday by Médiamétrie.
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This is the best audience achieved by a meeting of the Blues during this World Cup.
The hotly contested match, which ended in the defeat of the French women after an interminable penalty shootout (0-0, 7 tab to 6), achieved 69.6% audience share (PDA).
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Nearly seven out of ten viewers followed the match from 9:00 am, this morning schedule being explained by the time difference with Oceania, where the competition takes place.
Their previous matches had respectively been watched by 3.4 million (France - Jamaica on M6 on July 23), 4.3 million (France-Brazil on France 2 on July 29), 3.9 million (Panama - France on France 2 on August 2) and 5.2 million viewers (France-Morocco on M6 on August 8) viewers.
The audience record of the women's football France team dates back to June 2019, during the World Cup in France, with nearly 12 million viewers (TF1 and Canal +) for the eighth final victory against Brazil.
However, these audiences are still much lower than those achieved by the men's France team. For comparison, his quarter-final victory against England (2-1) at the 2022 World Cup had been watched by 17.7 million viewers on December 10 in the evening.
The threat of a black screen has long weighed on the 2023 edition of the Women's World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand, due to the reluctance of Western broadcasters to pull out the checkbook in the face of very uncertain audience fallout given the time difference.
At the end of a vast agreement announced in mid-June by FIFA concerning thirty countries, France Télévisions and M6 had acquired the rights to the event, allowing its free-to-air broadcasting in France.