Fans and Players love the
UEFA Champions League
CHAMPIONS
LEAGUE
Real Madrid - AFC Ajax
At the beginning of the European campaign, the presence
of heavyweights such as FC Barcelona, FC Bayern München
and AC Milan persuaded certain sectors of the continental
media to argue that the 1995-96 UEFA Cup was stronger
than the UEFA Champions League.
The debate didn't raise any hackles in Nyon, the
headquarters of UEFA. Far from it. UEFA would be quite
happy for people to argue year after year about the relative
merits of strong, healthy European competitions. But the
fans have the last word and, as Ajax and Juventus bring the
season to a thrilling climax in Rome, statistics reveal that
television audience have consolidated the UEFA Champions
League as the continent's flagship competition.
Not just in Italy and the Netherlands, where fans could
logically be expected to ride the waves of their club's
successes. German fans, for example, could have been
excused for losing interest in the competition after Borussia
Dortmund's quarter-final elimination by Ajax. The audience
figures for the semi-final first leg certainly reflected a degree
of disappointment, but RTL's transmission of the second leg
between Panathinaikos and Ajax saw the figure bounce
back up by 12.8%.
Ditto in Spain, where TVE registered record figures for Real
Madrid's group matches against Ajax and the quarter-final
against Juventus. Real's elimination provoked a drop in
audience but, even so, the average for the whole season of
6.1 million viewers per match outstrips all of TVE's previous
UEFA Champions League ratings.
Ditto in Britain, where the early exits of Blackburn Rovers
and Glasgow Rangers raised fears that the fans would turn
their back on matches involving "third-party" teams. It was a
very pleasant surprise when, for example,
the Panathinaikos v Ajax semi-final game gave ITV a 12%
rating and a very healthy 32% market share.
But there's nothing like the success of your own team to
boost TV audiences - even if they are sometimes fickle!
TF1 found this in France, where the semi-final return leg
between FC Nantes and Juventus attracted an initial
audience of over nine million. But Gianluca Vialli's early goal
for the Italians dampened enthusiasm in some households
and the overall figure of 8.62 million viewers was the
second-highest of the campaign.
There was no dampening of spirits in Italy. The same match
attracted 12.9 million viewers and a market share for RTI of
44%. It was the highest audience in Italy this season and the
second-highest figure of all time in the UEFA Champions
League. As for the Netherlands... well, there is little more to
be said about Ajax's phenomenal record and the massive
audiences turned in to NOS. But the semi-final against
Panathinaikos in Athens gained a market share of 65.4%,
the highest of the season.
Yet maybe the most revealing comment came from Atletico
Madrid's international midfielder José Luis Caminero when,
while they were still battling with Barcelona and Valencia, he
was asked what winning the Spanish league would mean to
him. "The chance to compete in the UEFA Champions
League", he replied without hesitation. "This is the peak. The
thing footballers dream about."
The UEFA Champions League is where the clubs want to be,
where the fans want to be and - most importantly-
it's where the footballers want to be.
