A peak audience of 24 million watched as Argentina knocked out England in the World Cup semi-final on Wednesday night (July 15) across BBC One and BBC iPlayer, giving the BBC an 85% share of all TV viewing.
It was the most-watched live television moment of the year across all broadcasters and the biggest live TV audience for a broadcaster since 2021’s Euro 2020 Final.
The semi-final averaged 22.1 million viewers on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. It was also streamed 12.6 million times across BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport website, and the BBC Sport app.
The BBC also recorded more than 2.8 million UHD streams of the match, and a record 1.8 million concurrent UHD streams, highlighting the growing demand for premium live sports coverage.
Innovations such as the BBC’s second-screen 3D experience were used 192,000 times during England v. Argentina and 4.6 million times across the tournament so far.
The BBC figures come just days after ITV reported that a peak audience of 18m viewers watched its coverage of England's World quarter-final victory against Norway. It was ITV’s biggest peak audience since the Euro 2024 Final.
Alex Kay-Jelski, Director of Sport at the BBC, said: “The extraordinary reach of our coverage across TV, iPlayer, BBC Sounds, the BBC Sport website, app, and socials, reflects the enduring power of major sporting events to create shared experiences on a remarkable scale.”
Adrian Pennington recently went behind the scenes on the FIFA World Cup 2026 to investigate how time-zone differences, travel demands, and the geographic spread of host cities are forcing broadcast and rights holders to rethink traditional production approaches. Discover more here.
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