The European Football Championship was scheduled to take place last year, but given the prevailing corona pandemic, football fans were forced to wait for the championship for another year.

Four days ago, the first kick in the tournament was finally taken - and the viewers have shown their appreciation immediately.

- People have really longed.

We have really put our soul, heart and passion into preparing and doing this as well as possible, says André Pops.

- It is so fun that so many want to take part in it.

Close to four million viewers

Not least during Sweden's extremely exciting match against Spain, where the Swedes finally managed to draw.

The viewing figure had an average of just over 2.7 million and the range showed 3.3 million.

In SVT Play, the figure landed at 1.2 million starts.

- There is almost nothing that engages the Swedish people as a football championship and this European Championship does not seem to be an exception.

That almost four million TV viewers saw Sweden pinch a point against Spain builds expectations and we hope for a long, warm European Championship summer with blue and yellow signs, says SVT's sports director Åsa Edlund Jönsson.

"Proud of how we handled it"

However, SVT got off to a tough start, when Saturday's premiere broadcast was overshadowed by Christian Eriksen's collapse in Denmark's match against Finland.

An event that shook an entire football world.

- I am very proud of how we as the editorial staff handled that event.

We did not have much time to prepare before we went in and we still did not know how bad it was with him, says Pops.

- It is important for SVT to know that we are able to take care of such things.

It is also important for us to get the good start we have got in terms of content, as it is a long championship with many broadcasts and lots of hours in both preparation and broadcast.

The most important thing was of course that Eriksen did well, but also that we did well.