So it was true, from a certain point of view.

For context, he's probably the most hated politician in those circles due to his work for strict measures during the pandemic (which was how he got the job in the first place).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lauterbach

I would be happy to see someone give some info on other markets, but I only follow the German one, as that's my home country.

Like I said, the two programs weren't competing directly.

That's true. Still, opening matches are usually a bigger deal, and in 2018, matches like Japan vs Senegal and Nigeria vs Iceland had way more viewers. Also, the game had ~250,000 viewers more than Morocco vs Iran in 2018 (17pm on a Friday), but the latter was also watched by an additional 1.7 million people at public viewing events while there was no public viewing for the Qatar match.

Yeah, it will be interesting. Naturally it will be way higher, but seeing that Germany's games had shares of more than 80% at all the previous World Cups, even 60% would be a disaster for the associations as well as the sponsors.

Edit: /u/NestroyAM, numbers are in, the share was 59.7%.

Nah, the episodes are standalone. New teams are also introduced pretty often, and only some of them have something akin to an arch. There are also huge differences between the episodes of each team, with some having more of a comedy approach, some being thrillers and some being action films (like the Till Schweiger ones back in the day), and depending of the popularity of each team / city, the ratings are different (the one in question was from Dresden, which is on the air since 2016 with now 14 episodes).

No, because the BBC only has the rights for the UK. Doesn't matter how they are financed.