Uefa expects UK viewing figures to rise for next week’s Champions League final after TNT Sports decided not to make the match free-to-air for the first time since the competition’s rebrand 34 years ago. Instead, the Paris Saint-Germain v Arsenal final will be shown on HBO Max alongside TNT Sports.
The move ends a run in which TNT streamed the final for free on discovery+ alongside its main channel coverage for two years. Over the past two seasons, about 1 million people watched the final for free each year, while TNT’s overall audience for the 2024 and 2025 finals was about 2.5 million. Uefa believes the wider reach of HBO Max, which is available in more than 10 million UK households, will more than offset the loss of a free stream.
The shift also marks the latest turn in a long running battle over access to one of football’s biggest nights. From 2015-16 to 2022-23, BT Sport made the final available free on YouTube in the UK. Before BT Sport, ITV screened the European Cup final after the competition was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992. The final is now behind a platform that has attracted millions of subscribers since its UK launch in March and is also available with ads at no extra cost for Sky Sports subscribers or as a paid extra via Amazon Prime Video.
Not everyone at Uefa is comfortable with the change. Some within the governing body have privately accused TNT of breaking the spirit of a contract that says best endeavours must be made to ensure club finals are available for free. But Uefa’s commercial team is understood to be happy with the decision, because it believes the change will deliver a bigger audience, helped by the presence of an English club in the final for the first time in three years.
That political argument has already reached Westminster. Jon Trickett wrote on X that all major sporting finals should be free to watch on UK television, and 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 dispute is unlikely to end with this game, because the question now is whether football’s biggest finals in Britain are becoming premium products first and public events second.
