New Delhi: SonyLIV continues to make the most of the football fever that has swept the country over the last few weeks. The home-grown OTT platform is streaming the football action LIVE from UEFA EURO 2020 since it began on 11 June and has already clocked a total of 14 million hours of streaming.

According to the platform, the engagement level of users has increased ever since the sporting extravaganza started on 11 June, and it is now gearing up for the finals to be held in Wembley, London on 11 July.

“Before the final kick-off, Euro has already outdone the FIFA world cup 2018 views and watch time,” it said on Wednesday, with a remarkable rise in viewership with matches like Portugal vs Germany, followed by Croatia vs Spain, France vs Switzerland, and England vs Germany from the playoff stage (Round of 16). The Portugal vs Germany match on 19 June (Saturday) was among the most watched in the tournament. The defending champion Portugal led by Cristiano Ronaldo was defeated by 4-2 in the match in the group stage despite the ace player’s goal and an assist.

SonyLIV had sold out 100 per cent of its inventory with seven sponsors onboard which included WazirX, Cred, Acko General Insurance, Dell Technologies, Mahindra, Betway and Black&White, said SonyLIV, Ad Sales and revenue head, Ranjana Mangla.

“Euro 2020 has been a great tournament for us. We successfully sold out 100 per cent of our inventory with seven sponsors and more than 35 brands from across categories like Auto, Electronics, Banking, Finance, Insurance, Technology & FMCG.  During this period Spotlight Roadblocks on the platform have also been a huge hit amongst advertisers,” said Mangla.

According to the platform, Euro 2020 is being viewed across more than 400 cities in India and has recorded significantly higher viewership from football loving states like West Bengal, Northeast, Kerala and Goa. “Also, the streaming of the matches in six different languages has seen encouraging traction in smaller non-metro cities. The uptake of subscriptions in non-metros has doubled as that of metro cities,” it said in a statement.

Riding high on the success of Euro 2020, the platform is now gearing up to on-board more advertisers for Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 as well as the upcoming line-up of global sporting events.

Talking about the association with SonyLIV, WazirX founder and CEO Nischal Shetty said, the success of Euro 2020 drew a great number of viewers and that has helped us engage better with our target audience. “Associating with a platform that caters to a vast audience with their various entertainment offerings has been a great association,” he added.

Another sponsor, ACKO, EVP Marketing Ashish Mishra said, “Our association with SonyLIV has been a fruitful one as it helps ACKO reach niche audiences across top cities. They have some great live sports content lined up, starting with the Euro 2020 which has been a huge success, bringing in diverse viewers. Our goal was to introduce the brand to newer audiences and through this partnership we successfully managed to get the desired reach and have continued to stay top-of-mind.”