Women’s World Cup sets UK audience reach record

The FIFA Women’s World Cup has hit the halfway stage of the tournament and has also set a new record for total UK TV reach for a women’s football competition.

Surpassing the current record of 12.4 million, which was set back in 2015 during the World Cup in Canada, the TV reach now stands at 17.2 million ahead of the knockout phases making it the UK’s most viewed women’s football tournament on record.

Audience figures for Englands last-16 victory over Cameroon on June 23rd have yet to be revealed.

This is one of the many highlights from the competition that has also seen a record-breaking 6.1 million tune in for England v Scotland, Australia’s three-goal comeback against Brazil, Marta becoming the all-time leading goal scorer at women’s or men’s World Cup and the emotional scenes that followed Thailand’s first-ever World Cup goal.

Highlights from the tournament so far:

• Top five TV audience games: England v Scotland (6.1 million), England v Argentina (5.4 million), England v Japan (4.7 million), France v South Korea (2.2 million) and USA v Chile (2 million)
• England v Scotland (6.1 milliom) is the most-watched women’s football game on UK TV with a further 494k online programme requests
• Total audience reach during the group stage for live matches is 17.2m – compared to 12.4 million for the whole tournament in 2015
• Online audiences across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport have seen a total of 6.2 million live and on-demand programme requests for the group stage matches
• Top five most requested matches across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport were: England v Japan (623k), England v Argentina (523k) England v Scotland (494k), Scotland v Argentina (353k) and France v South Korea (201k).
• Since the start of the tournament, BBC Sport online has received a total of 9.4m unique visitors so far to the Women’s World Cup section of the site

Barbara Slater, Director of BBC Sport, commented: “The interest in the Women’s World Cup so far has been incredible and viewers haven’t been short of daily entertainment as our teams have been working hard to deliver the best tournament to date to the millions that have followed the group stages. To set two new records – 17.2 million current total reach and 6.1 million for England v Scotland – in the opening weeks is extremely pleasing.”