Euro 2020 has recently finished and during it football euphoria touched every nation that was participating in it, while many other people from across the world were hooked on the action, despite not having a team taking part in it. When huge international tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2020 take place, the whole world goes crazy, even those who never really care about football. In the following article, we are going to look at how much money is made from the Euro 2020 competition, how many people watched it, and why live streaming is a great way to watch football matches in 2023.
The Euros Are A Financial Success
The Euro Championship has come a long way in the last three or four decades. In 1980, the tournament expanded to 8 teams, and it remained like this until 1996, when it was doubled to 16 teams. Then, in France 2016, 24 teams took part for the first time. Many had warned that this would decrease the quality of the competition, but this was not the case. In fact, some of the best moments of the competition were delivered by smaller countries such as Iceland and Hungary.
From a financial perspective, this tournament has also grown over the decades. The 1992 tournament that took place in Sweden generated €41 million of revenue, and this tripled when England hosted the competition in 1996. Belgium and the Netherlands hosted the competition in 2000, and there was a €229 million revenue.
Four years later, Portugal hosted the competition, and the revenue was €855 million, and this shot up to €1.35 billion when Austria and Switzerland co-hosted in 2008. Ukraine and Poland co-hosted in 2012 and the revenue was €1.39 billion, while the revenue from France 2016 was $1.91 billion. It has been estimated that this year's 2020, which took place in several countries, will rake in about €2.5 billion.
The 2012 edition made a profit of €669 million, while UEFA made a profit of €847 million for the 2016 edition in France. Based on this growth, it is almost certain that UEFA will land a profit of around €1 billion for the 2020 Euro. It is not only UEFA who make a pretty penny from this competition as the competing teams can earn plenty too. For example, a win in the Group Stage of 2020 earned the team €1.5 million and this increased all the way to €10 million for the winners.
Millions And Millions Of Viewers
Above we told you that the world goes crazy whenever there is a big international competition on, and the following viewership stats are going to help prove that.
The final was between England and Italy, and close to 31 million people watched it in the United Kingdom, making it the most viewed event since Princess Diana's funeral, which was watched by 32.1 million across Britain in 1997. One of Italy's main broadcasters is RAI, and they recorded 18.2 million people tuning in to watch the final. Rai's audience numbers grew in extra-time and during the penalty shootout, which highlights the earlier point we made about the Euros attracting those who are not usually that into football.
The United States is not known for being a football-loving nation (it's called soccer there by the way), but despite this 6.4 million people across the country tuned in to watch the final on ESPN. These huge viewership numbers mean that the 2020 final was the most-watched Euro final in US history, overtaking the Euro 2012 record of 4.5 million. This 6.4 million viewership means that more Americans tuned in to watch the final than they did for the first two matches of the NBA Finals.
Indians, as we all know, love their cricket but football is still a popular sport in the country, despite the fact that they do not have a particularly good national football team. Euro 2020 captivated millions of Indians, with about 58 million viewers across the country watching the action on the Sony Picture's Sports Network. There was a Hindi feed of live games and 17 million Indians made use of this.
Betting On Euro 2020
It is fair to say that UEFA and the participating teams were not the only ones who benefit financially from the European Championships. Football is the most popular sport in the world and many people now love to place bets on it. Moreover, with Online sports betting websites soaring in popularity all over the world, this means that there is plenty of money for these sites to make.
For example, ahead of England's quarter-final against Ukraine, Betfair announced that £5 million had been bet on England to win the competition. England went on to win 4-0 and make it through to the semi-finals for the first time since 1996, so you can bet that even more money were placed on them to win when the full-time whistle was blown.
While most football fans across England would have been disappointed by the loss on penalties, it is probably fair to say that all of the top bookies across the country, such as Betfair, Betway, and Bet365 were breathing a collective sigh of relief when Saka missed for England.
The English are, of course, not the only football fans that love to do a spot of football betting. It is fair to say that sports betting in Finland is really popular, and many Finns bet on Finland to win during the Group Stage. The Euros caused quite a fever pitch in Finland, and this is not surprising since this was the first time that Finland had managed to qualify for a major international tournament.
Finland's opening game of the tournament was against their fellow Scandinavians Denmark, and it was a match that was overshadowed by Christian Eriksen collapsing on the pitch and nearly dying. The game was temporarily postponed, and when play was resumed Finland scored the only goal of the game. Denmark had a chance to equalise from the spot, but they missed. It was clear to everyone that their heads were no longer in the game, and who could honestly blame them.
Before the match, all of the top-quality Finnish sports betting sites, such as the ones found at Suomi Veikkaus, were accepting many bets from optimistic Finnish fans who believed that their team could claim their first ever win at the European Championship. Most of these sports betting sites probably felt like they were taking candy from a baby since nobody gave Finland a chance of winning, and they probably would not have done had Eriksen not collapsed.
This victory for Finland cost the bookies millions, with the likes of Veikkaus.fi having to pay out a record €1.7 million to Finnish sports betting fans. We are pretty sure that pubs across Finland made quite a tidy sum of money that evening.
Live Streaming Football
Nowadays premium TV channels such as Sky Sports and BT Sports pay billions for the right to host big football competitions such as the English Premier League. The fact they have paid out so much for the right to show football matches can only mean one thing and that is high subscription rights to sign up with them and enjoy the live football.
Obviously, not everyone out there has the financial means to pay out an extra few hundred pounds a year for a subscription to watch football (no matter what the league is), so they must find a way to watch their favourite teams for free. This is where live streaming sites come into action - there are many sites out there now that offer live streams for a variety of sports. Thankfully when it comes to big international competitions such us the European Championship and FIFA the action is on terrestrial television, but this is not the case for a lot of club football.
These sites that live stream matches are often of good quality, but we recommend that you watch the live streaming on betting sites. The best betting sites, such as those that can be found at suomiveikkaus.com will have live streams for matches from big European leagues such as the La Liga, Serie A, and Bundesliga. Unfortunately, you will not find live streams at betting sites for the Premier League since they do not have the rights to show these matches.
Why do we recommend betting site streaming? Well, to start with the quality of the stream is a lot better. When it comes to streaming from an online site, the stream can often lag a bit and you will be several minutes behind the action. This will be a problem if you want to bet while you watch because you could think of a bet that you want to place and then when you log into your sports betting site to make the bet, you have missed out because you are behind. This will be quite annoying.
Bet Big
Another reason why we think it is better to watch live football streams on betting sites is that all the information that you need to place successful bets is right there on the screen for you. There will be all the live stats available for you, and you can put all the available data and what you have witnessed with your own eyes together to create a bet that has a higher chance of being a successful one. Bet big and win even bigger!
