The German firm's 'European Sport Sponsoring 2002' study indicates that tennis has overtaken Formula One to take the second spot behind soccer amongst European TV audiences.
The research, which polled viewers across the major European markets of Germany, England, France, Italy and Spain, indicated that while soccer was by far the favoured sport amongst television audiences, tennis was the only other content that was watched by high numbers of viewers within all five investigated markets.
Some sports fared better in individual countries, usually driven by the popularity of a national star or through having a traditional audience base in place, but soccer and tennis were the only ones to achieve this across all the markets.
Tennis' most popular region in terms of audience levels was France but performed well across all five markets whereas Formula One maintained its interest in Italy and Germany but suffered severe declines in the remaining three nations.
The drop-off in popularity of Formula One is indicative of the pressure the sport is under with the dominance of the Ferrari team making the outcome of the races increasingly predictable.
The growth in popularity of televised tennis has seen it become the second most watched sport amongst European viewers at the expense of Formula One, according to new research from Sport+Markt.
