THE bulk of next term’s Women’s Champions League games will go behind a paywall according to sports streaming company DAZN.
Viewers will be required to pay for 42 of the 61 matches in the contest with 19 fixtures remaining free to watch.
Free-to-view games will include the final and one semi-final and two matches from the quarter-final stage.
The move comes two seasons into DAZN’s four-year agreement to exclusively air the Women’s Champions League fixtures.
It also comes two years after Uefa introduced a 16-team group stage format with centralised streaming coverage via DAZN’s YouTube channel.
DAZN’s global markets CEO Veronica Diquattro said: “We want to help the women’s game realise its potential, by reaching audiences and by developing its obvious commercial appeal to create a virtuous circle of investment, growth, raising standards and overall interest.”
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To date the contest’s fixtures have been watched in more than 230 countries with DAZN having 362,000 subscribers to its platform.
And last year’s final, which saw Lyon beat Barcelona 3-1 at the home of Juventus, was watched by 3.6million viewers.
This figure marked a 56 per cent increase on the audience that tuned in to watch Barcelona beat Chelsea 4-0 in the contest’s decider in 2021.
Away from its online coverage this season’s competition has seen some record turnouts at knockout stage games.
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A crowd of 27,697 flocked to Stamford Bridge to watch Chelsea’s first-leg semis clash with Barcelona in April.
The match set a new record for spectator numbers at a Women’s Champions League game in England before Arsenal’s clash with Wolfsburg at the Emirates.
The Gunners’ semi-final second leg battle with the German giants a month later drew a crowd of 60,063
The fixture saw them break the attendance record for a women’s club game in England.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
