England’s failure to force the Euro 2024 final to extra-time and penalties heaped more misery on long-suffering English football fans, but it may also have robbed Optus Sport of a new Australian streaming record. The company confirmed on Tuesday that the match, broadcast early on Monday morning Australian time, is now number two on their list of most-viewed matches, trailing only the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy held in July 2021. Howard Rees, head of Optus Sport, described Euro 2024 as a “record-breaking” tournament. “While Optus Sport does not disclose subscription numbers, we have seen a record increase in new subscriptions,” he said, also noting the company delivered over 600m views on its social channels, which was “six times higher than our highly successful FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 coverage”. The Euro 2024 final kicked off at 5am on the Australian east coast, and finished around 7am with Spain the 2-1 winners. The final of the previous Euro tournament also kicked off at 5am, but by the time Gianluigi Donnarumma’s shootout heroics clinched the trophy for Italy, the clock read close to 8am. Optus Sport – which costs $25 per month or $7 for Optus customers – revealed that the 2021 match had reached “almost one million” viewers, and claimed an Australian streaming record at the time. Many of those viewers are understood to have logged on between 7am and 8am. The Euro 2020 final’s streaming record was broken last year by the Matildas’ semi-final in last year’s Women’s World Cup against England. The match, won 3-1 by England, was broadcast on both Channel Seven and Optus Sport. Seven claimed 970,000 viewers on 7plus and a new record for the most streamed event ever in Australia. Together with Optus’ audience for the match – estimated in the low hundreds of thousands – the match was the first event to pass the one million audience mark in the history of streaming in Australia. Dedicated subscription streaming services including Stan, Paramount+, Kayo and Amazon Prime continue to make inroads into Australia’s sports landscape, and their rising influence has prompted lobbying by free-to-air broadcasters. Established Australian media players want their ad-supported platforms like 9now and 7plus given priority to acquire online rights to major national sporting events ahead of the new subscription players. Amazon Prime Video was the Australian broadcaster for last month’s men’s T20 World Cup, its most significant sports rights acquisition so far. Hushidar Kharas, head of Prime Video Australia and New Zealand said the feedback from cricket fans in Australia “has been really positive” and he was delighted Amazon has also acquired rights to Major League Cricket, which will include players such as Test captain Pat Cummins. The company declined to release audience numbers for its T20 World Cup broadcasts.