Overall TV audience figures for the Glasgow 2019 European Athletics Indoor Championships showed an increase for the third successive championship with a strong increase over Belgrade 2017.
In partnership with Eurovision Sport, the championships were broadcast in 31 countries across Europe – three more than in 2017 – and on 51 different channels, not including the European Athletics live stream; there were 521 total hours broadcast including 433 hours live during the championships itself, with delayed, highlights and simultaneous coverage making up the remaining 88 hours.
Athletics fans across Europe collectively spent 63 million hours watching the three days of action on TV.
The biggest audience not surprisingly came in the host Member Federation, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which had a 27.6 percent increase in the hours viewed over Belgrade 2017 to 17,261,667 hours; the figures no doubt boosted by four victories including a repeat double triumph by Laura Muir in the 1500m and 3000m.
However, athletics clearly has a great following in Poland, which augurs well for the next European Athletics Indoor Championships in the Polish city of Torun in 2021.
More than 11.5 million hours of the championships were watched by athletics aficionados in Poland, no doubt cheering on their compatriots who topped the medal table with six gold medals, a 17.1 percent increase over the viewing figures of two years ago.
Norway – which saw triumphs by Karsten Warholm and Jakob Ingebrigtsen in Glasgow – also saw a big increase in the audience for the championships, a 16.1 percent increase in the hours watched over Belgrade 2017. Two years ago, the majority of the coverage in Norway was in non-live highlights programmes but this time around nearly all of the championships coverage was live.
Other countries to show significant increases in audience figures included Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Türkiye.
“Firstly, I have to once again congratulate the Glasgow 2019 organisers for producing an excellent championships, which looked magnificent on TV. Secondly, these figures show the that European Athletics major events continue to be an increasingly attractive product for TV audiences and broadcasters,” said European Athletics President Svein Arne Hansen.
“This latter fact has been born out by every major European Athletics event since I became President in 2015 but, as I said after the European Athletics Championships in Berlin last summer, we will not rest on our laurels. European Athletics will work closely with future local organisers and broadcasters, through our partnership with Eurovision Sport, to make sure our events continue to impress and grow our audiences on television and via other digital devices ” he added.