Since I had a look at the Europa League viewership the other day, I thought it was only fair to consider the Champions’ League Final – particularly as some every-so-slightly misleading press information seems to have escaped.

First off, it’s worth saying that this year’s final was one of the worst directed finals I’ve seen in ages. Technically it felt all over the place, with inappropriate cutaways, overuse of the Spidercam, using it for replays of action for which it wasn’t really suitable. Worst of all were the continued crowd reaction shots.

It’s a repeated issue at sports events that directors task some camera operators with finding people “emoting” as much as possible on screen. As often as not, it’ll be a woman the camera lands on, despite the crowd being heavily male skewed. While I’d love to think it was making the sport accessible for both men and women, in fact, it’s an eye candy thing, and frankly it’s outright sexist. See also “podium girls”, coverage of much cricket around the world, and women with umbrellas at the start of motorsport events.

Worst than all of that was the rush to cut to a young girl supporting the losing Atletico Madrid, in floods of tears at full time, when there were plenty of celebrating Real Madrid fans to show. Showing despondent losing fans is fine, but featuring a small child is outright nasty.

UEFA need to get a grip. I don’t know who was responsible, but it was a mess. The sound for the needless opening ceremony at the start was abysmal (at least watching via BT Sport), and indeed either the event director or BT themselves lost interest in Alicia Keys preferring to show players waiting in the tunnel. It didn’t get much better for Andrea Bocelli who had to sing the pointless “anthem” that Man City keeps getting fined for booing.

Leaving aside Pepe’s appalling antics, what about the overall audience figures?

Well unlike with the Europa League, there don’t seem to be actual figures easily available. The Guardian’s report, which, like that in The Drum, seem to be drawn from a BT press release, mentions 4.3m watching with a peak audience of 3.3m.

That’s a bit odd. What you normally get is a peak audience, and then an average for the whole programme. The average is necessarily lower than the peak.

Therefore 4.3m must be the number of people who tuned in for at least a few minutes over the course of the game. A reach figure. Interesting, but not how TV ratings are usually reported. You get a big number, but it doesn’t reflect the audience of the match itself.

Based on a peak of 3.3m, it suggests an overall viewership of, perhaps, 3m. (I’ll update this if I can find an accurate number, but I think I’m being generous).

Let’s put that in perspective and compare with ITV’s audiences in recent years.

So clearly the lowest audience, although last year’s Barcelona-Juventus game was a little low itself. The last British team to make the final was Chelsea in 2012 when 7m people watched.

Ah yes! But this doesn’t consider YouTube!

Well as I said previously, making the match available on YouTube is smart, especially since it’s far more robust than most broadcasters’ own video players. But we need to be very wary of the numbers being bandied about.

“The telecoms giant, which said that it aimed to make the finals as accessible as possible despite paying £897m for the pay-TV rights, said about 1.8 million viewers watched the match live for free on YouTube.”

Now I’ve no doubt that BT got some reasonably detailed metrics from Google on viewers. But I’d need to be persuaded that the 1.8m number is an average viewership over the duration of the programme. More likely it’s based on YouTube “views.” That would tend to mean 1.8m views of at least 30 seconds, at which point YouTube considers you a viewer. A lot of views, but not the same as a lot of people or a large cumulative audience.

If I logged in from time to time during the course of the fixture to see how it was progressing, that might mean that I was considered another view on each occassion.

If I started watching the match on TV, but was then forced to watch in another room on YouTube because someone else in the household wanted to watch Britain’s Got Talent, I’d potentially be double counted.

On the other hand, I might have Cast YouTube to my TV set and watched with half a dozen friends. YouTube views isn’t able to help with this situation either.

Video views online are not the same as a TV audience.

Simply adding together peak audiences and YouTube views across the two European finals is not what anyone should be doing.

Considering that no British teams were in the final, BT didn’t achieve a dreadful audience. But reports that say the two finals were “watched by more than 12 million across digital and TV,” are utterly misleading, counting the same people perhaps multiple times.

Whether UEFA thinks that it’s premium club competition was as available to all as much as it might have been will be for UEFA and BT to discuss. But let’s not believe all the hype and dubious numbers.