Uefa is expecting far higher UK viewing figures for next week’s Champions League final than in recent seasons despite TNT Sport’s controversial decision not to make the game available free-to-air for the first time since the competition’s rebrand 34 years ago.

An average audience of about 1 million watched the Champions League final for free on TNT’s streaming service, discovery+, over each of the past two seasons. HBO Max, which will be showing the Paris Saint-Germain v Arsenal final alongside TNT Sports, is available in more than 10 million UK households.

TNT’s viewing figures for the 2024 and 2025 finals were about 2.5 million, which should be boosted a week on Saturday by the presence of an English club for the first time in three years.

As revealed on Monday TNT has opted to stream the game on HBO, which charges £4.99-a-month for the cheapest subscription, after two years of streaming the final for free on discovery+ alongside its main channel coverage.

From 2015-16 until the 2022-23 the Champions League final was made available for free on YouTube by the UK rights holder, BT Sport, and before that it had been screened by ITV since the European Cup was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992.

Although some at Uefa have privately accused TNT of breaking the spirit of a contract that states “best endeavours” must be made to ensure its club finals are available for free, the European governing body’s commercial team is understood to be happy with the decision in the belief it will deliver a bigger audience.

HBO Max has attracted millions of subscribers since being launched in the UK in March and is available at no extra cost for Sky Sports and Amazon Prime customers, taking its overall potential reach to more than 10 million.

Despite the limited take-up of TNT’s free offering in recent years, its decision to introduce a charge for the final has been widely criticised over the past 24 hours.

“All major sporting finals should be free to watch on UK television,” the Labour MP Jon Trickett wrote on X. “I’d like to see the government take action to ensure future events like the Champions League final are accessible to as many people as possible.”