Euro 2012 Breaks All-time Audience Record

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Euro 2012 Breaks All-time Audience Record

PR Newswire

KYIV, Ukraine, June 26, 2012

KYIV, Ukraine

,

June 26, 2012

/PRNewswire/ --

Nearly 1.3 million visitors watched the group and quarter final

matches of

EURO 2012

. The stadiums of the championship co-hosts

Poland

and

Ukraine

saw the combined number of 1,274,186 football

fans over the fortnight. According to the tournament director in

Ukraine

Markian Lubkivskyi, the average attendance at the stadiums

reached 98 percent.

European football championship first attracted over a million of viewers in

1996, when matches in the UK were visited by over 1.27 million people. This

number used to be the highest attendance figure for EURO until 2012.

One may indicate a significant turnout increase over the history of the

tournament, as the first UEFA European football championship, held in 1960 in

France

, unfolded in front of the eyes of almost 79,000 fans.

EURO 2004

in

Portugal

was witnessed by nearly 1.16 million people, while the latest

EURO

2008

, co-hosted by

Austria

and

Switzerland

, drew in 1.14 million football lovers,

reports

Champion.com.ua

.

The remaining

three EURO

2012 matches will take place at the tournament's

largest arenas - the National Stadium in

Warsaw

(capacity - over 58 thousand),

Donbass Arena in Donetsk (over 50 thousand capacity), and

Kyiv's

NSK

Olimpiyskyi (70 thousand)*. It is expected that the total audience of

EURO 2012

will reach 1.4 million people.

Notably,

Ukraine

prepared four stadiums for the European Football

Championship - the National Sports Complex Olimpiyskyi in

Kyiv

(will host

EURO

2012

final), Donbass Arena in Donetsk, Arena Lviv in Lviv, and Metalist Stadium

(nicknamed

Spider

) in Kharkiv. As a result of renovation, Olimpiyskyi became

the second largest stadium in

Eastern Europe

capable of hosting up to 70,050

guests. Stadium in Lviv was built specially for the championship.

According to UEFA,

EURO 2012

fan zones in the eight host cities also

experienced notable turnout. The attendance leader among the eight fan zones

is the one in

Kyiv

- as of

June 20

th

, 1.19 million football fans visited the area

since its opening. Reportedly, the largest and loudest

EURO 2012

fan zone at

Warsaw's

Plac Defilad was attended by 820 thousand fans.

Total fan zone attendance as of

June 20

th

equals 4.241 million, with Polish fan

zones attracting almost 1.8 million visitors and Ukrainian - nearly 2.5 million.

*Numbers according to the official websites of the venues.