Advanced Television

Record numbers for Eurosport’s Four Hills Tournament

January 14, 2019

Eurosport is celebrating a record-breaking Four Hills Tournament with the European broadcaster registering its best-ever audience numbers for the flagship event on the ski jumping World Cup calendar.

A peak audience number of seven million viewers across the Eurosport Network tuned in to watch Ryoyu Kobayashi become just the third man of all-time to win the Four Hills “grand slam” as the Japanese sensation claiming the honour at each of the events in Garmisch, Innsbruck and Bischofschofen.

Boosted by exclusive coverage and fans hoping to see countryman Kamil Stoch repeat his heroics from the 2018 edition of the Four Hills tournament, Eurosport recorded its best-ever audience in the history of the channel in Poland during the qualifying session of the first event in Oberstdorf in December. The same session in Oberstdorf, meanwhile, was the sixth best audience of all-time across the Eurosport Network – and the best winter sports audience ever.

As well as Eurosport in Poland, double-digit year-on-year average audience number increases were also recorded on Eurosport in Italy (+43 per cent), France (+36 per cent) and Sweden (17 per cent) with an increase of 8 per cent in Germany and 5 per cent in the Netherlands for the Four Hills Tournament.

Emir Osmanbegovic, Eurosport SVP Sports Content and Production, said: “While we are always looking at ways to bring our content to more people on more screens, there is still clearly a huge demand for watching premium sporting events – such as the Four Hills Tournament – by traditional means such as linear TV.  The numbers for this year’s coverage of Four Hills are particularly impressive compared with the 2018 edition given anticipation last year was reaching a crescendo with the Winter Olympics on the horizon. Eurosport has a deep-rooted heritage in winter sports and we have attracted a new demographic of viewer that have become fans through our award-winning coverage of the Games last February.

“The Four Hills Tournament kicks off a huge year for winter sports on Eurosport – all three World Championship events, starting at Are in Sweden in early February, will be screened on our platforms where we will combine our local expertise in these markets with global scale,” he concluded.

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