The BBC has revealed that its coverage of last night’s Wales v England World Cup Group B game was watched by a peak audience of 18.7 million across TV, iPlayer and BBC Sport Online (accounting for viewers across TV and other devices), which it said is the biggest UK audience of the World Cup so far.
It said that there has been significant demand for World Cup matches on iPlayer throughout the tournament so far, while last week saw the full range of BBC programmes on iPlayer streamed a record 165 million times, a 20 per cent week on week increase, eclipsing the previous high by 12 million streams.
iPlayer has also seen a record number of younger viewers accessing the platform, with 6.3 million BBC account holders under-35 watching BBC iPlayer last week, which is an increase of 41 per cent week on week, beating the previous record of five million.