Insight

It came home! The Lionesses reached their third European final on July 31^st and, to the joy of a nation, did something that no English football team has done since 1966 – they won!

The match was watched by an average live audience of almost 11m people on BBC1, peaking at 17.6m when the final whistle blew at 7:32pm to confirm England as champions.

The BBC coverage was expertly anchored by Gabby Logan who signed off with a riff on that famous commentary line from 1966: “You think it’s all over? It’s only just begun.”

From a football perspective, and with two daughters surely only 15 years or so away from making their Tottenham debut, I certainly hope that Gabby is right that the women’s game is on the cusp of a great leap forwards. But what about the television audience?

2009 was the last final the Lionesses reached. On that occasion, Germany took the trophy. The average audience of 1.15m was the fourth highest audience on BBC2 that day, behind Mock the Week (2.9m), The Frankincense Trail (2.2m) and The Love of Money (1.5m). Clearly, the appetite for watching the women’s game has increased dramatically.

The Frankincense Trail (in case you were wondering) saw Kate Humble make an epic two-thousand-mile journey across the Middle East, following the ancient frankincense trade route. While The Love of Money was about the financial crisis of 2008.

We can also get an insight into the demographic make-up of the audience. One of the big changes is that the audience was much more female in 2022 than it was in 2009. The audience to the 2009 final was only 35% women (aged 16+) and 2% girls (aged 4-15). It only contained 78,000 children of either gender. In 2022, more than a million children watched the final, 42% of the total audience were women and 4% were girls.

Chart 1: Gender profile for Women’s European Championship finals: 2009 v 2022
Source: Barb 31/07/2022 and 10/09/2009. Men and women aged 16+. Children aged 4-15.

Proportionally fewer men watched the final of the men’s Euros in 2021, but this was largely due to an increase in the proportion of children who watched – 6% were girls and 7% boys. By that measure there is still some work to do to make sure children are watching the women’s game.

The age profile is remarkably similar between the two finals contested by England’s women. 24% were under 35 in 2009, while 21% were under 35 this year.

At this point further comparison to the audience for games played by the men’s team is interesting. The audience for the men’s final between England and Italy that took place in 2021 was much younger – 34% were under 35.

Chart 2: Age profile for European Championship finals featuring England
Source: Barb 10/09/09, 11/07/21, 31/07/22.

At the other end of the spectrum, a much smaller proportion of the audience to the men’s game was over 65+ at only 21%, while 28% of the audience to the 2022 final was 65+ and a similar 29% were in the same age bracket for the 2009 final.

In common with almost all live sports events, the audience for the Lionesses’ crowning moment was almost entirely on TV sets. The audience on PCs, tablets and smartphones was less than 50k.

An almost ten-fold increase in the TV audience for the final for our winning team in 2022 compared to the audience to the final in 2009 is great testament to the work that has already taken place. It will be interesting to see if and how audiences shift to Women’s Super League matches this season and over further tournaments.

And from a joyous occasion to one of great sadness for some – the final extended episode of Neighbours aired on Channel 5 on Friday July 29th 2022. The consolidated audience of just under 4 million on a TV set, just over including viewing on four screens, comfortably beat the 633k that the show has averaged this year. As we bid fond farewell to the residents of Ramsay Street, one can’t help but wonder what became of all those young actors who started their journey on what might be Australia’s most famous export?

Fortunately, Channel 5 had you covered – Neighbours Made Me a Star: From Ramsay St to Hollywood aired just after the final episode and captured an audience of almost 1.4m.

So, while the Neighbours journey is at an end, women’s football in England is just getting started. We’ll be ready to report on the viewing along the way.

Doug Whelpdale, Head of Insight at Barb