STV scores record audience for Scotland's Euro 2024 opening match

Fans across Scotland showed their support for the national team on Friday night, with STV’s live and exclusive coverage of Scotland v Germany delivering the highest ever opening game audience across a Euro competition on any channel.

Reaching 1.79m viewers and scoring a peak audience of 1.38m, STV’s coverage was not only the channel’s best watched programme of 2024 but netted the biggest audience for any channel in Scotland so far this year.

The match tracked 20 share points ahead of the network (73% v 53%).

Over on STV Player, with 524k streams, it was the streamer’s highest ever match (compared with 494k streams Euro 2020 Eng v Denmark, up by 6%).

STV has back-to-back games on Saturday, with Hungary v Switzerland at 1.15pm followed by Spain v Croatia at 4.15pm. STV will show England’s final group game against Slovenia and will have picks one, two and three of the Round of 16 as well as first pick of the Semi-finals.

STV will show what is likely to be one of the most anticipated early tournament games – the Group B match between Spain, who are among the favourites, and Italy, the holders.

The group stage coverage includes games featuring many pundits’ favourites, France against Austria on June 17, as well as other heavy hitters in Portugal, who play Turkey on June 22, Croatia who face Spain on June 15 and Belgium , who are in action against Slovakia on June 17.

Moving into the knockout rounds, if the home nations progress to the last 16, both matches will be on STV. STV will have the first three picks, plus the fifth and seventh picks from the Round of 16 ties, the second and fourth Quarter-final picks and first pick of the Semi-finals. Both STV and BBC will show the Final.

Bobby Hain, MD of Broadcast at STV, said: “We’re thrilled to have delivered exclusive coverage of the first match of the UEFA Euros 2024 between Scotland and hosts, Germany.

“Scotland is a nation of proud football fans and the incredible ratings for both the channel and STV Player are testament to that.

“With loads of live matches live on STV, we’re hugely excited about a month of top-flight football coming up for fans.”