Three million people watched the Champions League and Europa League finals live on YouTube for free, about a quarter of the 12 million-plus who caught BT’s coverage across digital and TV.
BT Sport signed a deal with YouTube to air the European finals alongside its own mix of coverage on pay-TV and free-to-air channels as well as on bt.com.
Saturday’s cliffhanger Champions League final, which saw Real Madrid pip Atlético Madrid in a penalty shootout, attracted a total audience of over 6 million viewers to BT Sport’s coverage.
The telecoms giant, which said that it aimed to make the finals as accessible as possible despite paying £897m for the pay-TV rights, said about 1.8 million viewers watched the match live for free on YouTube.
Another 4.3 million watched BT’s pay-TV channel and its free-to-air Showcase service.
Overall, BT Sport said more than 12 million people watched its coverage of the Champions League and Europa League finals.
“BT Sport set out to begin a new era of live mass broadcast for major sporting events, combining TV and digital media to make this the most widely available and social broadcast of a Uefa Champions League and Europa League final ever,” said Delia Bushell, managing director of BT Sport & TV.
The recent Europa League final, which saw Liverpool defeated by Sevilla, drew a YouTube audience of more thna 1 million.
The match drew a total TV audience of 5 million, and a peak of 3.6 million.
Just under half of all TV viewing of the two finals was on BT’s free-to-air Showcase channel.
“Our aim is to bring top-quality sport to more people and we will continue to look for new and innovative ways of doing this across the full range of platforms that viewers are now using to consume content,” said Bushell.
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