“Just not a record”, says the VRT about its broadcast of the World Cup. In addition to the 300,000 fans who came to Leuven on Sunday afternoon, an average of 957,564 Flemings followed the match at One. Only the 2015 World Cup in Richmond, where Peter Sagan took his first rainbow jersey, scored better with an average of 1,136,820 viewers. Please note: then the World Cup was broadcast in the evening, due to the time difference.
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At the peak time at 4:37 PM, when Julian Alaphilippe raced to his second title, 1,337,809 people watched this time. This means that almost 90 percent of all television screens in Flanders were aligned with the course. On Sunday, a total of 1,709,753 Flemings of four years or old watched the World Cup broadcasts for at least ten minutes. That is 28% of the Flemish population.
33 hour course
The women also attracted a lot of people to the screen on Saturday afternoon, with an average of 372,208 viewers and a peak of 623,007 viewers on arrival. The promises scored even better on Friday with 430,293 viewers and a fine 680,359 viewers at the time of the finish.
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“When we watch the entire week of the World Cup in Flanders on television, we have broadcast more than 33 hours on seven days with the VRT,” it says at the public broadcaster. That’s all the time and road races of elite, promises and juniors for men and women added up. “We thus reached 2,411,491 Flemish viewers. That is just under 40 percent of the Flemish population aged four years and older.”