BBC Scores Against ITV In World Cup Coverage

The BBC’s coverage of England’s victory over Denmark on Saturday attracted nearly four times as many viewers as that provided by ITV.

Both BBC1 and ITV1 showed the game, which kicked off at 12.30pm and saw England beat Denmark 3:0 to go through to the next stage of the World Cup finals. However, a peak audience of 13.2 million viewers watched BBC1’s coverage, compared to just 3.6 million who tuned in to ITV1.

The BBC’s coverage attracted an average audience of 12.4 million and secured a 70% share of viewing, marking BBC1’s highest Saturday lunchtime audience share in over a decade. In comparison an average of 3.2 million tuned into to the game on ITV1, which managed a 17% share.

Director BBC Sport, Peter Salmon, said: “It is a credit to the talented team of producers and presenters that we have at Match Of The Day. We are looking forward to building on this for the rest of the tournament.”

Reports suggests that campaigns to boycott ITV’s football coverage as a reprisal for Carlton and Granada’s failure to pay Football League clubs the £180m it owes them (see

Broadcasters had been concerned that viewing figures for this year’s tournament would be lower than in the past due to the early kick-off times of most of the games. However, almost 12 million people tuned in to the BBC1 to watch England’s historic defeat of Argentina in the first round of the World Cup finals (see England’s Defeat Of Argentina Draws 12 Million) and more than 12.5 million people saw England’s World Cup 2002 debut against Sweden on ITV earlier in the month (see England Versus Sweden Attracts Over 12 Million To ITV).

BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.co.uk

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