BBC’s coverage of England’s penalty shootout victory over Switzerland last Saturday reached a peak audience of 16.8 million viewers.
This peak viewership represented a TV share of 77% of the UK population that day, whilst the game averaged an audience of 13.6 million viewers.
Additionally, the match was streamed 8.9 million times on BBC iPlayer. BBC Sports brought in 10.5 million visitors to its platform, 5.3 million of which followed the game live online, whilst its live page was viewed 16.6 million times throughout the match.
England secured its place in the semi-finals of EURO 2024 after Bukayo Saka equalised in response to Breel Embolo’s opener in the second half to make it 1-1, eventually drawing the game to penalties.
After Jordan Pickford denied Manuel Akanji’s opening penalty in the shootout, all five England penalty takers converted successfully to win 5-3. England will face the Netherlands on Wednesday (10 July) for a place in Sunday’s (14 July) final.
Despite another high viewership figure, the rating’s peak fell narrowly short of ITV’s coverage of the England-Slovakia game, which brought in a peak viewership of 18.4 million.
This rating could be broken on ITV again during England’s game against the Netherlands due to it being a semi-final, which is England’s second consecutive appearance at this stage of the competition.
England’s 2-1 semi-final victory over Denmark at EURO 2020 brought in a lofty 24 million viewers across ITV and ITV+1, which was also played on a Wednesday night.
If England were to progress to the final on Sunday, they will face either France or Spain, who compete in the other semi-final played this Tuesday (9 July).
