Italy: Rai1 top channel in 2016, notably with 26 of the 51 games of the Euro 2016

The public, free-TV channel Rai1 was the most watched TV channel in Italy in 2016, with an average audience share (calculated over the entire day, all individuals aged four years and older, from 01/01 to 21/12/2016) of 16.71%, according to figures from the Italian audience measurement institute Auditel, and reported by Italian press on 04/01/2017. Rai1 was ahead of the private, free-TV channel Canale5 of the Mediaset group (15.63%), and the public channel Rai2 (6.73%).

The programming of the Italian Sanremo Music Festival and 26 games of Euro 2016 posted the best audiences on Rai1 in 2016. The five evenings of the Sanremo Festival drew an average 10.74 million viewers on Rai1. The Italian public television group Rai totaled 71.92 million viewers for the broadcast of the five games of the Italian national team in Euro 2016, an average of 14.38 million viewers per game.

The top audience in the peninsula country for Euro 2016 was Italy's quarter-final against Germany (1-1, Germany advanced 6-5 on penalties), which drew 16.5 million viewers on average on Rai1, on Saturday, 02/07/2016…