Champions League Tops Italian Viewing

Porto’s victory over Roma in the UEFA Champions League Wednesday night pulled the biggest audience of the day on Italian television. RAI 1 drew 4.821 million viewers and a 20.4% share.

What a difference having a home team in the match makes for a broadcaster. Dutch channel Veronica had three times as many viewers for the match featuring Ajax on Tuesday night as for the one shown last night with no local team on the pitch.

Ajax’s 4-1 win over Real Madrid was the number one show in Holland with 2.845 million viewers and a big share of 46.6%, while Manchester United’s victory over PSG was number nine the following evening with 908,000 and a share of 18.4%.

In Germany, both matches were on pay-TV on Wednesday, with Sky Deutschland pulling 450,000 viewers and a 1.7% share.