England’s World Cup Quarter Final match was watched by a peak audience of 23 million across ITV and ITVX.
The game drew the biggest audience of the tournament and the highest peak on any channel this year (biggest since the final of last year’s European Championship between England and Italy).
It was the most watched programme on television on any channel this year for all viewers (15.1m) and 16-34s (2.5m).
ITV1 had its best Saturday night on record (records go back to 2002 when the old regional ITV structure ended).
Across all viewing on all devices, an average audience of 20.4 million viewers watched the match – with an average of close to 16 million viewers [15.8m] watching the full live and exclusive coverage.
England v France match was streamed 15.3m times.
In total there were 30m streams on ITVX on Saturday, which is the best ever for the Hub or ITVX.
ITV traditionally secures the first pick of games in the Group of 16 and Quarter Final stages of major football tournaments. This usually ensures it can show the maximum number of games featuring England, maximising advertising revenue. These are however often the rounds England loses, giving rise to talk of an ‘ITV curse‘. The BBC then traditionally gets first pick of the semi finals.