French basketball rarely gets the honors of “prime time” but each time it is broadcast, it is a hit! Saturday evening, the match between France and the United States achieved a record audience with, on average, 8.68 million viewers in front of France 2, or 49.1% market share. In second place, TF1 is very, very far behind with 2.23 million viewers and 12.4% market share with its series “Section de recherche”.
On Thursday, against Germany, at a different time, France had reached a peak audience of 8.9 million viewers at the end of the match, and Nicolas Batum's teammates did even better on Saturday evening with 10.2 million people in front of their screens at 11:14 p.m., for “money time”. That's a 54.5% audience share!
For comparison, the final of the 2021 Olympic Games, already between France and the United States, had brought together 770,000 viewers on France 2. Why such a modest audience? Because you had to get up at 4:30 in the morning, but already at the time, one in two French people were in front of their small screen with a 51% audience share.