Women's Sports: Will the Audience Show Up?
M Insights, Each month, the feature section includes a in-depth article based on the results of our studies, analyses, and expertise to provide an ever-more nuanced understanding of market trends, as well as insights and analysis of changes in the media behaviors of the French public.
The three major competitions on the summer 2025 schedule showed that more and more TV Viewers—both men and women—were tuning in to watch the women’s events. Especially when the female athletes triumphed.
Will 2025 go down in history as the year of women’s sports? Given the string of major events scheduled for last summer, there was every reason to believe so. The schedule featured major sports—soccer, cycling, and rugby—as well as prestigious tournaments—the European Soccer Championship from July 2 to 27 in Switzerland, the Tour de France from July 26 to August 3, the Rugby World Cup from August 22 to September 27 in England—and promising French teams… However, various factors must be taken into account when considering the viewership of such events, such as the location of the host country, including the potential impact of the time difference; the timing of the broadcast broadcast A mode of transmission whereby a transmitter sends the same audio and video stream to many receivers within a coverage area. In the context of computer networks, broadcast mode is contrasted with “multicast” and “unicast” modes, which respectively refer to the transmission of a stream to a given group of recipient devices and to a single recipient device. OR : Putting a show or a programme on television or radio. This term refers to a programme that is broadcast live as opposed to on-demand. Find out more , as certain time slots and days are more favorable than others; and the length of the French athletes’ runs. Also decisive are the programming offerings, particularly high-profile matches or the prominence of the channel channel A subset of the brand URLs that overlap with a single theme (e.g., news, e-mail, etc.); the channel audience contributes to the overall audience of the brand, which itself contributes to the overall audience of the Parent. Find out more broadcasting them; and criteria specific to each competition, such as the popularity of the sport or the athletes participating in it.
Please note: As of January 1, 2024 the scope of TV audience measurement audience measurement Quantitative study of the frequency of use of media. Find out more in France has changed and now includes the audience audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more from all French households, including those without a television, as well as viewership on home internet screens.
2025 WOMEN’S EUROPEAN SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP
For the soccer tournament—considered the king of sports on TV—which brought together the major nations of Europe, the matches broadcast broadcast A mode of transmission whereby a transmitter sends the same audio and video stream to many receivers within a coverage area. In the context of computer networks, broadcast mode is contrasted with “multicast” and “unicast” modes, which respectively refer to the transmission of a stream to a given group of recipient devices and to a single recipient device. OR : Putting a show or a programme on television or radio. This term refers to a programme that is broadcast live as opposed to on-demand. Find out more on channels owned by the TF1 and France Télévisions groups proved quite popular. They drew an Average Average The average is one of the most important statistical indicators for a set of numbers. By default, it is the arithmetic mean, calculated by adding the values in the set and then dividing that sum by the number of values. Find out more of 1.5 million TV Viewers aged 4 and older, and the tournament as a whole reached a total of 36.1 million people. These figures are therefore higher than those achieved during the 2017 European Soccer Championship in the Netherlands—a competition broadcast exclusively by France Télévisions at the time—but lower than those from 2022 in England, which was broadcast by the TF1 and Channel Channel A subset of the brand URLs that overlap with a single theme (e.g., news, e-mail, etc.); the channel audience contributes to the overall audience of the brand, which itself contributes to the overall audience of the Parent. Find out more + groups. “The trend is generally upward for this competition, despite the 2025 edition falling short of the 2022 viewership figures,” confirms Alyssa Normant, senior research analyst at Médiamétrie. She attributes this decline “in part to Les Bleues’ shorter run in the tournament,” noting in particular that “the highest ratings for each edition correspond to Les Bleues’ final match in the tournament.” With 4.9 million TV Viewers, the French team’s defeat last summer in the quarterfinals was indeed watched by fewer people than the one three years earlier in the semifinals—also against Germany—which drew 6.2 million TV Viewers. However, it attracted a larger audience audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more than the loss to England in 2017. It is also worth noting a growing popularity among women, with the share of female TV viewers rising from 38% to 43% of the total audience over the past eight years.
2025 WOMEN’S RUGBY WORLD CUP
This figure is quite comparable to that seen during the Rugby World Cup, with 44% of the audience audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more watching the matches being women. But the 2025 tournament above all “set a record for both the Average Audience Average Audience The average audience (or average audience rate) of an event (programme, advertising slot, channel, time slot, etc.) is the arithmetic mean of the cumulative audience for the different units of time measured. Depending on the accuracy of the survey, this may be a second, a minute or a quarter hour (in this case, we say average quarter hour). This indicator is interpreted as the average number of viewers/listeners during the event. It can be calculated by finding the ratio of Individual Viewing Time (IVT) for the event and the event duration. Find out more and coverage coverage The audience accumulation over a long period (week, month, etc.) This is the number or percentage of people having had at least one contact, of any duration, with the media studied during the time period. It is calculated based on continuous panels. Find out more ,” notes Alyssa Normant, “with the competition undoubtedly benefiting from the enthusiasm surrounding this sport, which is increasingly uniting the French people.” Even though the figures fall short of those achieved during the 2023 Men’s World Cup—53.5 million TV Viewers, 4.8 million on average, and up to 16.5 million for the match between France-South Africa—the French women’s team attracted 3.1 million TV Viewers on average, and 3.8 million during their loss to England, the eventual tournament champions. The tournament reached 34.6 million people, 2.5 times more than in 2017 during the World Cup in Ireland, and three times more than three years ago. “The lower viewership figures in 2022 can be attributed to the overnight broadcast broadcast A mode of transmission whereby a transmitter sends the same audio and video stream to many receivers within a coverage area. In the context of computer networks, broadcast mode is contrasted with “multicast” and “unicast” modes, which respectively refer to the transmission of a stream to a given group of recipient devices and to a single recipient device. OR : Putting a show or a programme on television or radio. This term refers to a programme that is broadcast live as opposed to on-demand. Find out more ,” the research analyst notes. New Zealand was the host country, which created a significant time difference for the French broadcast.”
2025 WOMEN’S TOUR DE FRANCE
Between these two team sports competitions, the women’s Tour de France has broken all records since its relaunch in 2022, following several years of hiatus. “The 2025 Tour de France Femmes marked its best edition yet on France Télévisions channels, both in terms of Average Audience Average Audience The average audience (or average audience rate) of an event (programme, advertising slot, channel, time slot, etc.) is the arithmetic mean of the cumulative audience for the different units of time measured. Depending on the accuracy of the survey, this may be a second, a minute or a quarter hour (in this case, we say average quarter hour). This indicator is interpreted as the average number of viewers/listeners during the event. It can be calculated by finding the ratio of Individual Viewing Time (IVT) for the event and the event duration. Find out more and coverage coverage The audience accumulation over a long period (week, month, etc.) This is the number or percentage of people having had at least one contact, of any duration, with the media studied during the time period. It is calculated based on continuous panels. Find out more ,” notes Alyssa Normant. The race’s stages were watched by an average of 2.7 million TV Viewers, compared to 2.3 million to 1.4 million in previous years, and a total of 27.1 million people engaged with the competition this year, compared to 22.1 million in 2022 and 20.7 million in 2024. That year’s edition, having taken place immediately after the Paris Olympics, attracted a smaller audience audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more . As the highlight of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes, the final stage—won by overall champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot—reached new heights. With 4.4 million TV viewers and a peak of 8.1 million when the French champion crossed the finish line at 7:04 p.m., it achieved ratings on par with the men’s race. It’s also worth noting that the audience demographics for both Tour de France events are similar: “an older audience, with three-quarters aged 50 and older,” explains the research analyst, “and predominantly male, with 55% men and 45% women in both cases.”
This final stage of the Tour de France captured not only the attention of TV Viewers but also that of internet users. In fact, on August 3, 2025—the final stage of the Tour de France Femmes—the top 50 sports media outlets—including news websites and Pure Players Pure Players A company that operates its business exclusively online, on the internet. Find out more (L’Equipe, Foot Mercato, Sports.fr…), and sports-focused sections of general-interest media outlets (BFM RMC, franceinfo, Le Figaro…), as tracked by Médiamétrie//NetRatings, recorded the tenth-highest audience audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more since the start of the year, with 6.9 million Unique Visitors. “It’s clear to draw a parallel between the final stage of the Tour de France Femmes and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s victory, given that the major men’s competitions had already ended by late July,” says Catherine Poullet, Director of Internet Audience Measurement Audience Measurement Quantitative study of the frequency of use of media. Find out more . She also notes “a definite surge in interest in the Letourfemmes.fr website (the event’s official site, published by Amaury Sport Organisation—Ed.), which attracted 2.1 million monthly Unique Visitors last July and 1.8 million in August, compared to 1.2 million in July 2023 and nearly 1 million in August 2024. ”