Despite being plagued by injuries that knocked out some key players in past weeks, France entered the World Cup with a bang on Tuesday — and scored a ratings victory for TF1 at the same time.
At home, an average 12.53 million viewers tuned in from 8 PM local time to watch Les Bleus defeat Australia’s Socceroos 4-1.
That gave the leading broadcaster, and all of French television, the biggest audience of the year and the best since June 2021.
Market share averaged 48.1%. BeIn Sport, which is also showing the matches, does not communicate viewing figures. The strong turnout is despite earlier polls which indicated that 54% of French people said they would not be watching the tournament due to the controversy surrounding host country Qatar.
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