Cristiano Ronaldo made his Juventus debut in a thrilling 3-2 win over Chievo and a whole lot of people tuned into see the five-time Ballon d’Or winner in Serie A for the first time over the weekend.
According to Gazzetta dello Sport, via Football Italia, 2,330,234 unique viewers tuned in to see the £99 million man play 90 minutes on Saturday, making Ronaldo’s debut the fourth-highest viewed programme on Sky’s Italian brand.
Only two derby Derby d’Italia clashes, in 2013 and 2016, and Roma’s visit of Juventus in 2015 are ahead of Chievo-Juventus when it comes to Sky Italia’s audience numbers.
It just goes to show how much of a draw the 33-year old is – and you just know these type of numbers will continue across the season thanks to his big-money arrival.
He’s already played a central role in Juventus’ social media channels seeing some quite remarkable growth, while Real Madrid’s attendance against Getafe suffered following his departure from the Santiago Bernabeu.
The 13-time European champions had just 48,466 fans in the house for their opening game in La Liga, and though part of the reason is because of the later kick-off time – a key factor in Los Blancos recording their worst attendance for nine years has a lot to do with the lack of presence of a certain Portuguese talisman.
sportbible.com
