match of nearly 19 million watched the closing minutes of
Manchester United's triumph over Bayern Munich. There was a
global audience of about 500 million for the European Cup
final, the highest for any club game anywhere in the world.
In the United Kingdom, an average of 15.5 million viewers
saw the match on ITV, with the audience peaking at 18.8
million during the climactic moments as Teddy Sheringham and
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored the decisive goals. These
figures are the highest for any sports event this year and
easily exceed the 11.7 million who watched United's victory
in the second leg of semi-final against Juventus.
The largest British audience for any sports event remains
the 25.2 million who tuned in to the 1990 World Cup semi-
final between England and West Germany, a game shown by both
the BBC and ITV. The highest for a football match shown on
just one channel is 23.8 million, when ITV screened the 1998
World Cup game between England and Argentina.
The match in Barcelona provided a boost for takeaway food
outlets because viewers did not want to break away from the
match to cook an evening meal. Domino's Pizza sold a record
£250,000-worth of food during the evening, 80 per cent up on
a normal Wednesday. Greenalls, the leisure company, reported
that beer sales trebled in many of its pubs, especially in
the Manchester area