Uefa is expecting a far bigger UK audience for next week’s Champions League final, even as TNT Sport has decided not to make the match free-to-air for the first time since the competition’s rebrand 34 years ago. The Paris Saint-Germain v Arsenal final will be shown on HBO Max alongside TNT Sports a week on Saturday.
The shift matters because the final has long been treated as a television event for everyone. TNT’s streaming service, discovery+, drew an average audience of about 1 million for the final over each of the past two seasons, while its viewing figures for the 2024 and 2025 finals were about 2.5 million. This time, HBO Max will carry the game in the UK, where it is available in more than 10 million households and costs £4.99 a month for the cheapest plan.
That makes this a bigger test of appetite than a simple rights decision. HBO Max launched in the UK in March and has attracted millions of subscribers since then, while Sky Sports and Amazon Prime customers can access it at no extra cost. Uefa’s commercial team is understood to believe the paid model will deliver a bigger audience, and in that sense the organization is backing the move that has drawn the most attention.
But the backlash has been immediate. The decision to introduce a charge for the final has been widely criticised over the past 24 hours, with former Labour MP Jon Trickett writing on X that all major sporting finals should be free to watch on UK television. He also said he would like to see the government take action to ensure future events like the Champions League final are accessible to as many people as possible.
The row sits inside a much longer British broadcasting history. From 2015-16 until 2022-23, BT Sport made the Champions League final available for free on YouTube in the UK. Before that, ITV screened the final after the European Cup was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992. Some at Uefa have privately accused TNT of breaking the spirit of a contract that says best endeavours must be made to ensure its club finals are available for free.
That criticism gets at the heart of the matter: the final is still being sold as a premium product at the same time it is expected to be one of the biggest live events of the year. Uefa expects viewing figures next week to be much higher than in recent seasons, but the argument over whether the biggest night in European club football should sit behind a paywall is now part of the story too.
