Chelsea vs LAFC viewing figures revealed with Club World Cup match hailed as a ‘standout moment for Channel 5'
CHELSEA's Club World Cup clash with LAFC has been hailed as a "standout moment for Channel 5".
The
1
Chelsea's clash with LAFC was watched by a staggering 1.6million people
Credit: AFP
The viewership of the match was highly rated too, as Channel 5's audience peaked at
1.6MILLION
viewers.
This number was a staggering 15 per cent share of the viewing audience in the UK.
President of Paramount International Advertising Sales Lee Sears hailed the achievement of Channel 5.
He insisted that sport can help improve the broadcaster's average viewership.
Sears also highlighted the impact that the match had in terms of grasping the attention of the younger generation.
This was evident as the 16-34 demographic peaked at 34 per cent of the viewership.
Sears said: "Last night's Fifa Club World Cup match was a standout moment for 5.
Most read in Football
JOIN SUN VEGAS: GET £50 BONUS
"Driving big numbers, including new and hard-to-reach younger audiences to the channel.
"It's a clear example of how premium live sport can outperform our channel average and deliver real value to both viewers and advertisers."
Incredible ref cam footage shows moment Chelsea star Pedro Neto sent opponent 'back to LA and into next MLS season'
Channel 5 is broadcasting 23 of the 63 matches from the Club World Cup in the US.
The broadcaster agreed the deal with DAZN - which will exclusively show the remaining 40 matches for free.
Club World Cup 2025 Guide
SOME of the world's biggest clubs are heading Stateside for a MAMMOTH Club World Cup.
Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Man City, and Inter Miami are among the 32 teams taking part in the tournament, which runs from June 14 to July 13.
Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland, Ousmane Dembele, Cole Palmer and Harry Kane will be showing their skills to packed crowds across the US.
Los Blancos are favourites to lift the trophy in New York but will face stiff competition from around the globe.
Here's everything you need to know ahead of the tournament...
INFO
Everything you need to know ahead of the Club World Cup
LATEST NEWS & FEATURES
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Irish Sun
38 minutes ago
- The Irish Sun
Chelsea star Romeo Lavia reveals bizarre plan to make Premier League more ‘showbiz' after Club World Cup trip to US
ROMEO LAVIA reckons the Premier League should introduce the glitzy walk-ons which are stealing the show at the Club World Cup. Players are 4 Lavia admits he enjoyed the walk-on in Chelsea's opening game Credit: Getty 4 Players line up before the Club World Cup match between Chelsea and Los Angeles FC in Atlanta Credit: AP 4 Nicolas Jackson is surrounded by lights as he makes his entrance Credit: Getty And Chelsea midfielder Lavia, 21, said: 'It's a bit of a showbiz thing, isn't it? I quite like it. 'The only difference is we might get a bit cold because once you're out there, you have to wait for the other players. 'But I enjoyed it. Why not bring it to the Premier League?' Lavia was taken off at half-time READ MORE IN FOOTBALL Having had his season interrupted by niggling injuries, he sees this tournament as a way to steadily recover full fitness, form and consistency. He was replaced by Blues vice-captain Enzo Fernandez, Competition for places is at the heart of what drives the Blues on. Lavia said: 'It's what is needed for the club, so it's all healthy. We all have great connections. Most read in Sport BEST FREE BETS AND BETTING SIGN UP OFFERS 'It's about doing our best every day and then the manager must decide who he wants to pick. 'It was about managing minutes for me. There's no physical issue. 'The biggest 'credit' a footballer can have is to be available. It's definitely something I'm aware of. Incredible ref cam footage shows moment Chelsea star Pedro Neto sent opponent 'back to LA and into next MLS season' 'I just want to put the injuries behind me and look to the future.' Chelsea will continue ther The Brazilians opened up their campiagn on Tuesday by beating ES Tunis 2-0. 4 The Mercedes-Benz Stadium was a lot warmer than your average Prem ground Credit: Reuters
Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Trent Alexander-Arnold takes first step of Real Madrid high-wire act
On Tuesday morning the Miami Herald carried a story about a Local Man arrested in Florida's Polk County for breaking into a stranger's house to make himself dinner and have a bath rather than going home to face his wife after an argument. The Local Man, who has no criminal history, was apprehended just as he was settling in for a relaxing soak. He has since been charged with burglary. So on balance, and while an entirely tempting, innovative option, this is probably not the way to go. Pressure makes diamonds, as online graft-influencers like to say. But it also makes the average human yearn for a little quiet space. That same Tuesday morning Trent Alexander-Arnold, who could probably also do with a break from the white noise, was taking his second Real Madrid training session in the 32C (90F) heat of the Gardens North County District Park, a hundred miles south-east of Polk, and in a team where the entire experience can at times resemble an unceasing spousal argument. Madrid are the most relentlessly exposed football club on the planet, huge even in a place where it feels at times as if nobody actually knows the Club World Cup is going on just up the road. Towards the end of the opening ceremony on Saturday a Fifa-branded wailing wall of hope was wheeled out on to the pitch at the Hard Rock Stadium, trailed by a gaggle of children, who then solemnly implanted 32 lighted bricks bearing the badges of every competing club. The big screen lingered on one badge only, the Madrid emblem, drawing huge, shrill cheers from a crowd that had to that point seemed interested only in Lionel Messi doing his Elvis in Vegas act. Welcome to the world, Trent, as we may now call him, a place where every moment is public, every second in the branded nylon out there to be hungrily consumed. The Hard Rock Stadium is also the venue for Madrid's opening game against Al-Hilal on Wednesday in the brain-mangling heat of a (frankly insane) 3pm kick-off. Before then it is to be hoped there is space to take a few breaths, because this will surely be the most scrutinised pre-season debut any footballer has faced, globally streamed, instantly consumed and analysed. In America the sun rises every day, as Ronald Reagan pointed out, accurately. But it tends also to bring quite a bit of light and heat with it. There is something else, too. For all the hype and hopeful talk, one thing is true: the evidence is that he will probably fail. This is not a criticism, more an assessment of the balance of facts. There are also competing positives. Madrid have a huge wealth of talent plus a very good new manager. The early sessions with the team have been encouragingly moreish. The chat among the Spanish journalists who follow Madrid is that Trent has tended to trail after Jude Bellingham 'like the new kid at school', and there was something tender about the first glimpse of Alexander-Arnold in the rondo, out there surrounded by all those faces, Luka, Kylian, Vini, trying to control a ball on plastic grass, like some recurring anxiety nightmare. But his own verdict was encouragingly plain: 'It's high quality, the ball moves very fast. It's a lot different to what I'm used to.' And the optics are good. He's a proper athlete, not just a mobile passing brain, impressive physically, with a grace and power that aren't always evident on TV. Trent in sleeveless Madrid training gear looks starry, handsome, easy in his movements. Speaking Spanish early on is also very smart, the hala Madrid-la stuff, the serviceable accent. The 'rebranding' as Trent is a nice idea, a New Me, a post-breakup reinvention. Trent12 posing in front of Madrid's massed European Cups looked disarmingly relaxed. He has already lifted that pot you know. He has already done terrible things to Barcelona. The new kid has moves too. But there is also one great unanswered question. Is Alexander‑Arnold actually a transferable commodity? He is both a very good player and a very strange one. This is not like bolting on an orthodox centre‑half or a goal-sniffing No 9. Alexander‑Arnold was brilliant for Liverpool in a highly specialised role. And there is so far no evidence, aged 26, that this can be transplanted. All of his professional success has been for one club under one manager: Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool, that system, three hard-running midfielders inside him, empowered to lean only into his strengths. The Arne Slot season was decent, so-so, a fudge. Either side Alexander‑Arnold has never played for any other club, never managed to succeed with England. He has only been his best self in one shirt, under one manager, at the club he grew up with. It is easy, from this starting point, to see only the darker clouds. Klopp drew extraordinary returns out of Alexander-Arnold's creative, high-precision passing. But we remember also the tendency to switch off, the good, competent defending interspersed with moments of no defending at all. Some will suggest no Englishman has ever really succeeded at Madrid, aside from Steve McManaman, a different kind of player, and probably David Beckham, El Jefe de Miami. There is another more structural problem. Madrid don't just have a new manager, they have an entirely new type of manager. In Xabi Alonso the club of vibes, energy, imperial freedoms, have appointed a hard systems coach. Basically, Kylian is going to have to do things now. How's that going to work out? This is also nuanced. Alonso is not an aura-dad in the Carlo Ancelotti mould. He's also not a pure number-wanging technocrat. He's a blend of these personas, a super-cool systems guy, aura and numbers. He's got nice tailoring. He's also got an iPad. For all that, two things are undeniably true. First, the Madrid squad is not instantly suited to replicating the Bayer Leverkusen style, which featured exceptionally disciplined pressing, learned patterns, brutal periods of running and resilient defence. And second, Alonso obviously knows this. He knows the club and the players. He knows the task here is not to go Full Amorim, to adapt and integrate. For all the pre-analysis nobody actually knows how Alonso is going to embrace this point of tension. Like Trent he faces the associated challenges of the step up to this stage, a manager who will basically spend his first few months trying to juggle a bowl of fruit while also putting out a minor kitchen fire and making soufflé for 500 paying guests. But there are also good points for Alexander-Arnold in this. Much has been made of Alonso's Leverkusen formation. But at its best this was only ever really a starting point, an armature for a controlled fluidity, rotation, drilled overloads. And the fact is that wing-backs/full-backs were key to that success. Alonso drew his flank players into the central rotation. He had dribbling on one side, passing smarts on the other. Perhaps the best early model for Trent in Madrid is as a kind of right-sided Álex Grimaldo, freed up to use his creative passing, to spark the transitions, to move into the centre. It is clearly also a good thing that Mbappé will start on the left. Nobody has been able to make him run backwards. But perhaps Trent can make him go the other way, his excellent diagonal passing into the Mbappé channel an obvious point of interest. Madrid's new No 12 is very, very good at providing creative direction for speedy players in front of him. Make the midfield work, make those players fit and understand their roles, and there is an opportunity for some pretty decent chemistry here. The only real issue is time. As in: you don't get any. The same goes for margin for error, forgiveness, latitude, even when the urge to crawl off and hide in someone else's bathtub is at its most profound. This why even the opening act in Miami feels vital, the first step in a high‑wire act, and a first chance to prove the Trent identity, always a little butterfly-ish, can flourish in that unforgiving heat. Guardian
Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Pep Guardiola could blood new signings with Rayan Cherki ‘impatient to play'
Manchester City could have a fresh look as they begin their challenge at the Club World Cup on Wednesday. Pep Guardiola's side enter the maligned tournament in the United States as they take on Moroccan side Wydad Casablanca in their Group G opener Philadelphia. The game brings manager Pep Guardiola an early opportunity to blood his latest signings after the club continued their squad overhaul by bringing in four new players last week. Rayan Ait-Nouri, Rayan Cherki, Tijjani Reijnders and Marcus Bettinelli arrived at a combined cost of £108million and immediately joined up with the squad to travel to the US. Those deals came after Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis were brought in in January amid an underwhelming 2024-25 campaign. Third-choice goalkeeper Bettinelli aside, the new faces are in line to make debuts at Lincoln Financial Field in a game that kicks off at midday local time. With Kevin De Bruyne having now departed and Jack Grealish not with the squad and facing an uncertain future at the club, the next phase of City's transition looks set to get under way. Guardiola has continually referred to the Club World Cup as the start of 2025-26, rather than the end of the last trophyless season, and Cherki, for one, is anxious to get going. 'He's the best coach in the world, and I think he's the best coach in history,' said the France midfielder in an interview released by the club after his signing. Rayan Cherki, left, is among City's summer signings (Adam Davy/PA) 'To work for him is an honour for me and I'm impatient to play.' City are the defending champions at the Club World Cup having won it in its old guise in December 2023 before its dramatic rebranding as a 32-team, month-long tournament this summer. Cherki said: 'This cup is a new cup and we want to win. It is every four years and I want the team to win because it's the first time in history.' City have based themselves near Miami for the tournament and were due to head to Philadelphia on Tuesday. Guardiola was scheduled to hold a press conference at 11.45pm BST. City have further group games against Al Ain of Abu Dhabi in Atlanta and Juventus in Orlando.
