BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - England's match against Serbia has become the first game without German participation at the European Football Championship to reach the ten million viewer mark. According to AGF Videoforschung, more than 11.8 million viewers watched England's 1-0 opening victory on ZDF on Sunday evening. The public broadcaster thus achieved a market share of 44 percent.

Around 7.8 million people had already watched the previous match between Slovenia and Denmark on ZDF. The match gave the channel a market share of 38.3 percent.

RTL also broadcast its first match of the European Championship on Sunday afternoon. On average, 6.1 million people watched the match between Poland and the Netherlands, according to the private broadcaster. This meant a market share of 41.8 percent.

The German team's opening game at the European Championships achieved the highest viewing figures of the tournament to date. 22.49 million viewers watched the DFB team's furious 5:1 win over Scotland on the second channel on Friday. Telekom, which has the rights to all 51 tournament matches, does not publish viewing figures for its streaming service MagentaTV./pul/DP/jha