An extraordinary event, which put Rome and Italy at the centre of the world for the past six days. The Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships closed their doors with a formidable tally in terms of sports performance, participation, entertainment and media coverage.
Six days of amazing sports performances
The choice bring forward the European Championships to the first week of June transformed them into a pathway to the Olympic Games in Paris, making them essentially the European Trials. This is confirmed by the wealth of great performances: the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships close with 15 championship records, 47 national records, 256 personal records, extraordinary statistical numbers.
There were 1474 athletes in the competition on the track and field of the Olimpico and on the road events on the streets of Rome, representing 48 European federations, of which gained medals and 35 saw their athletes finish in the top eight positions in at least one final.
Italy’s athletics team dominated the medal table thanks to the 24 medals awarded, of which 11 gold, acquiring a leadership position in the context of European athletics, followed by France with 16 medals (4 golds), and Great Britain & Northern Ireland with 13 medals (also 4 gold medals).
An inclusive event, closer to the public and athletes
Roma 2024 introduced innovations aimed at making this event a memorable experience, both for the public and for athletes. For the first time, the long and triple jumps were set up a few metres from the Tribuna Tevere stands, bringing athletes into close contact with the public. The renovated Stadio dei Marmi (main warm-up and training area) was accessible free of charge to all athletics enthusiasts. The race walk and the half marathon competitions ended with the finish line inside the Olympic Stadium, a triumphant entry for athletes in the trail of the iconic the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Finally, as many as 135 medals of the 147 total were delivered on the mega-stage at the Medal Plaza set up in the Piazza of the Fountain of the Sphere, giving medalists and the public other moments of great emotion and fan experience in the free-access fan village.
The approximately 20 hectares of the historic Parco del Foro Italico and the streets of Rome of the half marathon route, saw the presence of about 235 thousand people, including the 137 thousand spectators present at the Olympic Stadium.
Brilliant viewing figures and unprecedented media interest
Despite the great competition for media attention during the same week, (Tennis Open in France and the football friendlies ahead of the European Championships), Roma 2024 played a leading role in television and radio programming in major European markets and great attention across social media platforms.
Aggregate broadcaster viewing data confirms the positive trend, that sees Roma 2024 surpassing the already excellent numbers of Munich 2022 that reached 382 million global viewers and 720 million audiences across all media, digital and analogue.
In France, prime time tv figures always exceeded one million viewers on event days, reaching 1.8 million on Saturday night. In the Scandinavian countries, the market share above 50%. In Germany, Sunday’s evening touched 4.1 million viewers on the flagship ARD channel.
In Italy, the evening of Tuesday, June 11, watched attentively from the stands by the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella, obtained an aggregate of 4.9 million viewers between RAI 2 and Sky Sport. This peak was also touched last night (4.7 million viewers, of which 3.5 on RAI 2 and 1.2 on Sky Sport) with the host country’s Head of State present once again at the Olympic Stadium to follow the final evening.
The legacy
Italy’s athletics team increasingly the protagonists of the championships. A balanced budget. A sustainable legacy project, aimed at increasing the value of athletics, redeveloping the territory and contributing to the economic and tourist growth of the capital city and of the country as a whole. These are the traits of Rome 2024, which now hands over the baton to the city of Birmingham for the edition of the 2026 European Athletics Championships.