The “Tagesschau” had to wait longer, the “Tatort” with Wotan Wilke Möhring was completely canceled: The final of the German soccer women on Sunday evening, which was narrowly lost to England, threw up the program in the first. It was worth it. 17.9 million people watched the game on television, tens of millions at the public viewing. The market share was 64.8 percent, as the ARD announced on Monday.
The German women’s national team led by coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg set a new record with their game. Never before have so many viewers watched a women’s soccer game on television. The semi-finals of the European Championship on Wednesday, in which the German team beat France, had given women’s football a new record. The broadcast on ZDF was watched by 12.2 million viewers (market share: 47.2 percent). Almost ten million people watched the quarter-finals between Germany and Austria on ARD (market share: 38.2 percent).
This was the highest range ever measured by the AGF for a women’s soccer game. The previous record comes from the 2011 World Cup, which took place in Germany and attracted significantly more interest than all other competitions before and after it. At that time, Germany was eliminated in the quarter-finals, which was watched by almost 17 million viewers.
When the Germans became European champions in 2013, a little less than nine million people sat in front of the screen.
What remains of the hype in the media, apart from the wish that television broadcasts do not constantly require the assurance of (male) experts to show what a great sport is being shown? Will the large television window for women’s football (almost all European Championship games were broadcast live by ARD/ZDF) become significantly smaller again?
“So far we have not been idle on the subject of women’s football either on TV or online,” says ARD sports coordinator Axel Balkausky to the Tagesspiegel. “We regularly report on the FFBL in the ‘Sportschau’, in the stream and on TV we showed around 15 games live in the past season. In addition, we broadcast international women’s matches together with ZDF and have always accompanied major events comprehensively in the past. We will continue to do so in the future as far as it is legally possible for us.”