Almost 1.5m Finns watch World Cup final

Almost 1.5m Finns watch World Cup finalNearly 1.5m Finns tuned into the World Cup final between Germany and Argentina in Brazil on Sunday night, with more than a million staying up until the conclusion of extra-time in a game that Germany ultimately won 1-0.

National broadcaster YLE revealed that 1.46m viewers watched football’s most prestigious game, with the number of viewers peaking at 10:30pm, 30 minutes before kick-off during the pre-match festivities. Around one million viewers stayed glued to their TVs to see Germany lift the trophy at around 01:00am Finland time.

The World Cup on the whole has been extremely popular among Finns, with YLE producer Jouko Jarva revealing that the average viewer numbers for all of the matches was roughly 600,000. He said that the figures were “surprisingly good” and were most likely helped by the poor weather over the course of the four weeks and a lack of competition from other stations.

Jarva went on to say that the group games during the first two weeks of the tournament were not as popular with Finns, attracting just over 250,000 viewers, most likely because around a third of them kicked off at 01:00am.

In Germany, around 35m people – in a country with a population of 81m – tuned in to watch Joachim Loew’s team claim their first World Cup since 1990. That figure eclipsed the previous TV viewership record that was set when Germany ran out 7-1 victors against Brazil in the semi-final last Tuesday. Many more millions headed to bars and public viewing areas to take in the big match.