The Italian state television (RAI) reached great results thanks to Ventura’s Italian national football team. Italy-Germany was watched by 7.3 million viewers, with a share of 27%. Overall, in the last twelve months the Italian national team engaged slightly less than 140 million TV viewers, a remarkable achievement if compared to the data of the previous years. In 2015 Italy collected around 6.6 million TV viewers per match while in 2014, the year of the disappointing World Cup in Brazil, the Azzurri reached 9.1 million people per match and 118 million during the entire season. The 2016 data are highlighting that RAI had a whopping 9.2 million TV viewers per match, something that is definitely beneficial for the Italian state television. Only in 2012 the overall audience result was better than that obtained in 2016. We are talking about the 2012 season when, even thanks to the great performances of the Italian national team that got to the final match in Kiev, 11.2 million people on average were staring at the TV.
It’s interesting to highlight that Giampiero Ventura beat Antonio Conte so far. With the actual Italy coach the audience increased to 7.2 million people per match while under Conte’s management only 5.6 million people on average were attracted by the results of the Azzurri.
At the top of the ranking of the most viewed match is the one against Germany played on March 29 with a 6.6 million viewers and 24% of share. 700,000 spectators less than those collected yesterday by RAI but a better result of that obtained just a few days before against Spain (6 million). When the pre-European retreat had already begun the audience consistently decreased. The two friendly matches against Scotland and Finland recorded a disappointing 4.9 million viewers on May 29, and 5.2 mln on June 6.
RAI reached the peak of audience viewership during the European Cup in France. The first 5 matches of the competition were ranked between the top six most watched events of the year. A total of 71.1 million viewers watched the gestures of the Italian football team in France with a whopping 14 million viewers on average. Obviously, the most watched match was the one between Italy and Germany (16.5 mln spectators) when the Azzurri sadly lost at the penalty.
From September 2015 Giampiero Ventura began his cycle as a coach of the Italian football team. In the first six matches with the new trainer, 43.7 million viewers were stuck in front of the TV, an average of 7.2 mln per game. Friendly matches are usually less attractive but the game played against Spain on October 6 2016 recorded a pretty interesting 8.3 million spectators. Behind the clash against the Furie Rosse (Red fury – A name given to the Spanish national team) there are the matches against Macedonia (8.1 mln) and Israele (7.7 mln). The game that Ventura’s guys played against France was the worst in terms of audience (5.7 mln people in front of the TV.) That match represented Ventura’s first appearance on the bench of the Italian football team and was played on September 2, perhaps when most of the people were still on holiday.
