ENGLAND’S Euro 2020 opening clash with Croatia set a new BBC record as its audience peaked at 11.6 million viewers.
The Three Lions got off to a winning start at Wembley on Sunday as Raheem Sterling scored the only goal of the game.
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The match was streamed 3.9 million times on iPlayer, a new record according to the Beeb.
An average 10.2m people tuned in to watch it live on BBC One.
The audience peaked at 11.6m, which was a 79% share of available viewers.
England’s first group game was also streamed a further 600,000 times on BBC Sport online.
That means around 4.5m streamed the clash on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport online combined.
That total number of viewers yesterday was still some way off the peak audience of 26.5m that watched England go out of the World Cup in 2018 on ITV.
The overall TV match average for the semi-final defeat to Croatia was 24.3m, while ITV also said there were a record 4.3m requests to watch it online on ITV Hub.
Leicester City’s 1-0 win over Chelsea in last month’s FA Cup final was watched by a peak audience of 9.1m viewers on BBC.
BT Sport’s coverage of the Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea reached 8.7m viewers across their TV channel and its digital platforms in May.
Sky One recently revealed this month’s Friends reunion special brought the channel its biggest audience ever of 5.3m viewers.
Meanwhile, the last ever Game of Thrones episode back in 2019 was watched by 5.789m million, making it the Sky’s biggest series finale of any show ever.
And the Line Of Duty finale landed a record 12.8m viewers last month – making it the most watched drama episode since records began.
The incredible finale managed to rack in 56.2% of the UK’s TV audience.
This made it the most watched episode of any drama since records began in 2002, according to the BBC.
Only an episode of ITV’s police drama Heartbeat reached similar figures, gaining 13.2 million in February 2001.
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