Rafael Nadal celebrated his tenth title at Roland Garros this year (Image: Getty Images)
Eurosport is reporting an 18 per cent increase for its French Open Tennis coverage.
The Discovery-owned broadcaster combined live coverage from Roland Garros with long and short form content including the re-titled magazine show Game Schett & Mats and Commissioner of Tennis episodes featuring John McEnroe, which scored an average audience of over one million.
Eurosport CEO Peter Hutton said: “At a time when there is a general feeling that the amount of viewers watching live sport on TV is in decline, Eurosport continues to defy that belief with a record-breaking 18% audience growth for Roland Garros, contributing to an overall viewership increase for Eurosport 1 of 9% this year.”
As Nadal picked up his tenth title, audiences in his home country of Spain climbed by 60 per cent when compared with 2016. An average audience of 62,000 across the tournament beat the previous best of 41,000 in 2012.
407,000 tennis fans watched beat Stan Wawrinka, securing the network’s second-best programme ever, the previous being the encounter between Roger Federer and Nadal at the Australian Open earlier this year.
Eurosport 1 Romania also reported its second-best programme in the history of the channel with over 780,000 viewers tuning in to the classic semi-final encounter between Simona Halep and Czech Karolina Pliskova, a figure that contributed to the same match being the most watched in the entire tournament (2,942,000 viewers on average).
Eurosport in Norway (up 18% against 2016), Italy (+15%) and Sweden (+20%) all recorded double-digit growth while Caroline Wozniacki’s run to the ladies singles quarter-finals helped Eurosport Denmark’s average audience figures increase a staggering 123% in comparison to 12 months ago.
Later this month Eurosport will broadcast Wimbledon to 34 territories.
