On TV, high-class (free) football rules, ok? Apart from intermittent royal reigns

In this streaming age, linear TV no longer routinely attracts tens of millions of viewers to the top shows and soaps, as it did in earlier decades. But one viewing property still draws the crowds

Let’s start with a quiz question. Which Premier League match holds the record for having the highest number of TV viewers in the UK since the revamped top division started in 1992-93? 

I’ll give you some clues. It was played in recent years. It was won with a goal from a striker who started all three of his nation’s group games at Euro 2024. The losing club that day currently have some of the very best players spread across various nations competing in Germany this summer.

The point of the question, which should be easy to answer with those clues, is that when you give football fans access to high-quality games for free (another clue), people will watch in significant numbers.

And when that happens at international level and the games are being played on the biggest stages - at World Cups and European Championships - the numbers are off the scale, in the UK at least.

In this streaming age when linear TV audiences have plummeted across pretty much every genre, it’s absolutely extraordinary that football, and only football, can consistently draw audiences of between 10m and tens of millions of fans per big event in the UK.

Arguably the only thing that can get close is a massively significant royal event, as I’m about to show.

Before we get there… my next investigative series (fully available to paid subscribers only) begins on Monday. I’ll be writing about Wimbledon all week - including its incredible global reach in sporting and business terms; and an unbelievable match-fixing story that unfolded before my very eyes on an outside court

British TV highs in 2024

I fully expect the most-watched event of any genre in the UK this year will be one of England’s matches at Euro 2024, almost certainly the last one they play, whether that’s in the last 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals or final. The only way this won’t be the case is if there is an (unexpected) royal event of seismic magnitude, such as a funeral and / or coronation.

England’s final Group C game, against Slovenia on Tuesday, attracted a live TV audience peaking at 15.4m viewers on ITV, with an average of 9.2m viewers watching ITV’s full coverage from 6.45pm to 10.45pm.

England started the tournament with a 1-0 win over Serbia that attracted an average 14.22m viewers on BBC1, peaking at 14.8m people watching on TV, with an additional 3.5m people watching via BBC digital platforms on the iPlayer, website and App.

The average audience - the industry standard metric for viewing figures - is the average number of people watching across the whole event, while the peak is the most people watching at any given point.

That 18m total for the Serbia game (when the digital live numbers are added to the TV numbers), was far ahead of the next most-watched non-Euros programme in the UK in 2024, the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office. The fourth and final episode of that powerful show drew a live audience of 10.386m people according to BARB, the agency that monitors viewing figures in the UK. That was then topped up by a few million more who watched on catch-up services.

To put this into more context, TV shows considered to be absolute smash hits in the UK earlier this year included Gladiators and The Traitors, which had audiences with average viewing figures as high as 8.4m and 6.5m.

The opening match of Euro 2024, in which hosts Germany thrashed Scotland 5-1, drew an average audience of 9.1m on ITV, peaking at 10.4m on 14 June.

England played Denmark in their second game, and had an average audience of 11.2m people at teatime on a workday, peaking at 13.1m people. That 11.2m was a 63.9% audience share for the time slot.

Scotland’s second match, against Switzerland, on the BBC, had a 54% audience share, averaging 8.6m and peaking at 9.4m, and their final game, against Hungary, also on BBC1, had identical figures, averaging 8.6m viewers, and peaking at 9.4m.

British TV highs in 2023

The most watched TV event of 2023 in the UK was the coronation of King Charles, which averaged 18.8m viewers across BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Sky.

And although there were a number of monster TV hits across the year, both critically acclaimed and hugely popular, from Happy Valley (best audience average 10.6m), Eurovision (10m), I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! (9.7m) and Strictly Come Dancing (9.6m), it was a football match that ranked second to the King.

And that match was the final of the women’s World Cup, in which Spain beat England’s Lionesses 1-0 in Sydney in August, with a UK kick-off time of 11am.

The average UK audience was 13.2m, shared between BBC1 (10.76m) and ITV (2.46m), with a combined peak of 14.4m. This was a record UK audience for a women’s World Cup final, although not for a women’s match, as we’ll see. 

British TV highs in 2022

The biggest TV event of 2022 in the UK (by average audience) was England’s quarter-final defeat by France at the Qatar World Cup, drawing an average audience of 19.4m people and peaking at 21.31m on ITV. 

There were two other massive events that peaked higher than that game; first the platinum jubilee of the Queen in June 2022, and then Her Majesty’s funeral in September. The funeral coverage was day-long across pretty much every channel in the UK, so the average figures, according to OFCOM, worked out at 13.2m.

But the peak audience as the Queen’s coffin was carried through the streets of London to Westminster Abbey was 28m people (20m watching on the BBC), and the average audience for the core part of the funeral, between 11am and midday, was 26.2m.

A second football match also made it into the top 10 TV events of 2022 in the UK - the Euro 2022 triumph of the England women’s football team as they beat Germany in the final. This match attracted a peak audience of 17.4m, making it the most-watched women’s football game in UK TV history. There was an average audience of 11.2m across the entire Match of the Day programme from 4.50pm to 9.30pm.

British TV highs in 2021

The England men’s football team registered the two highest TV audiences of 2021 as Gareth Southgate’s team reached the final of Euro 2020 before losing to Italy on penalties.

Considering the peak numbers first, that final was one of the most-watched events in British TV history, attracting more viewers than any event since Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.

The final was shown both on the BBC, who had a peak audience of 21m, and ITV, who peaked at 6m, for a combined peak audience of 31m. But the average audience for the whole programme on the BBC was just over 18m, and that was actually pipped by ITV’s average audience for England’s semi-final win over Denmark (18.4m).

Both the football matches were well clear in viewing terms of the other leading TV events of the year, including the Line of Duty finale (15.7m), Oprah’s interview with Meghan & Harry (14.8m), a Prime Ministerial statement on Covid in January (14.3m), and the finales of Strictly (12.2m) and I’m A Celebrity (11m).

British TV highs in 2020

Sport didn’t really get a look in, because most of it was cancelled or displaced due to Covid. A Prime Ministerial statement on the virus was the most watched TV event (18.9m) followed by various news specials and a statement from the Queen (all between 14m and 15m).

And with so many people locked down and with not much else to do, it was a bumper year for I’m A Celebrity (which hit 14.4m viewers), Strictly (12.6m), Bake Off (11.8m), Britain’s Got Talent (11.4m) and Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (10.7m).

The most-watched Premier League match in the UK happened this year too. Another clue.

British TV highs in 2019

BARB’s chart of the most-watched programmes in Britain in 2019 (part of which is below) has only one sports event in the top 10, and that was a rugby World Cup match. However, it was a highly significant year for women’s football, as England’s World Cup semi-final defeat to the USA drew an average audience in the UK of 8.99m, and 11.7m when the BBC digital programming was included.

That women’s World Cup set various viewing records for women’s football up to that point, with a record 28.1m people watching at least some of the BBC’s coverage of the 2019 women’s World Cup.

That figure, the BBC said, was “arrived at based on individuals watching coverage for 15 minutes or more - was more than double that for the previous World Cup in Canada (12.4m).”

The viewing gender split was 62% male, 38% female, with a total of 13.1m match requests (live and on-demand) on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport across the tournament.

British TV highs in 2018

The World Cup in Russia completely dominated the most-watched events in the UK in 2018, as can be seen from this BARB chart (extract below).

No fewer than seven of the most watched 10 programmes of all genres were from the World Cup, with England’s semi-final defeat at No.1, and other England games at No.2, No.3, No.4, No.7 and No.9.

The year’s smash hit drama, Bodyguard, could only make No.5, with an average audience figure of 14.34m for the most-watched episode.

The numbers on this BARB list don’t tell the whole story though, because they are average audience numbers for the entire programmes in which the football matches were shown, so typically starting about an hour before kick-off and often continuing for more than half an hour after the final whistle.

So the 20.73m average audience for England versus Croatia was the average watching multiple hours of TV. As a contemporary report detailed, the average audience for the game between kick-off and the final whistle was 24.3m viewers, peaking at 26.6m.

Quiz answer

The answer to the opening quiz is that Southampton’s 1-0 win over Manchester City in July 2020, thanks to Che Adams’ goal, set the record for the most-watched Premier League game in the UK, with 5.7m viewers.

It was so high because, due to Covid and no crowds being allowed, more matches were on TV, including dozens on free-to-air TV, including the BBC, which screened that Saints win in July 2020, during Project Restart. 

There’s a fascinating explanation on the Futures Sport & Entertainment website about how and why the 2019-20 Premier League season was the most-watched in the league’s history.

Long-term Sporting Intelligence readers and followers will know I have often written about viewing data for sports events and other major public occasions. Particularly I have focussed on nonsense claims of what events might attract in terms of viewers. And Kevin Alavy, the Global Managing Director at Futures Sport + Entertainment, has long been a hugely valuable source of accurate information. 

I quoted him in pieces including this takedown of the risible claim that 2bn people would watch the wedding of William and Kate in 2011, and in this piece (“Beware Billions Bollocks”) about another ludicrous claim, that billions would watch the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.

Most claims about potential audiences for major sporting events are massively exaggerated. Very rarely do they live up to the hype. But high-level football, on free-to-air TV? Well that remains a phenomenon. And that’s not bollocks.

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