Doha, December 08 (QNA) - The French daily newspaper Le Figaro reported that the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 enjoys a wide popularity in France, and that the matches of the French national team have become the most watched in the country this year.

The newspaper quoted Mediametrie (a company specializing in audience measurement and research into audio-visual and digital media usage in France) as saying that in France the 3-1 victory of the French team against Poland in the round of 16 gathered last Sunday an average of 14.3 million French people.

This made the match the most-watched TV program of the year in France the newspaper pointed, expecting the number to be dethroned on Saturday by the quarterfinal match of France against England.

According to Mediametrie, the first four matches of the French team attracted an average of 11.8 million fans. This figure is up from the previous World Cup in Russia, where the matches attracted 11.1 million people.

"Not only are the viewers there, they are even more numerous than during the last World Cup. At the end of the Round of 16 on TF1 sports TV station, 50.4 million French people had the World Cup in Qatar. More than the 47.3 million French were counted in 2018 over the same period. Excluding Blues matches, 46.5 million French people have followed the competition, which is 2 million more than in 2018," said Mediametrie.

L'equipe TV does not have any matches, but it capitalizes on the World Cup thanks to its magazines and debriefs. The one during the half-time of France-Poland, for example, conquered some 938,000 viewers, making L'equipe the third largest channel in France at the time. "All our programs are even stronger than in 2018," said its director, Jerome Saporito.

Le Figaro also quoted Magali Tezenas du Montcel, the general manager of Sporsora, (an organization that gathers the actors of the sports economy) as saying: "most of those who called for a boycott were not necessarily soccer fans." "What is important is not the number of advertisers but the value of the screens we are marketing," says Francois Pellissier, the TF1 group's deputy general manager for business and sports. The rates for this World Cup are indeed higher than in 2018." The increase in the price of spots in gross is around 17-18%. A challenge, while the French spend less and less time in front of the television? "This gives even more value to events like the World Cup. Content generating very high audiences being a little rarer, becomes more sought after", says Francois Pellissier. (QNA)