Croatia semi-final joins top five of most-watched England matches
ENGLAND’S SEMI-FINAL clash with Croatia had one of the top five biggest ever UK TV audiences for an England World Cup match, new figures show.
An average 20.7m viewers watched Gareth Southgate’s squad get knocked out of the tournament on July 11.
Only four other England World Cup matches in history have attracted more viewers.
Topping the chart is England v West Germany in 1990 – the last time before 2018 that England made it all the way to a semi-final.
That match was shown simultaneously by the BBC and ITV, and grabbed a combined audience of 25.2m – 16.7m on BBC One and 8.5m on ITV.
In second and third place are England’s matches against Argentina in 1998 and 1986 respectively.
Fourth is England’s quarterfinal with Cameroon in 1990, followed in fifth place by 2018’s semi-final with Croatia.
The new figures for the Croatia match have been published by ratings organisation Barb, and include people who recorded the game and watched up to seven days later.
They also show that the thirdplace play-off between England and Belgium on July 14 pulled in just 5.5m viewers.
Comparable ratings for UK TV programmes have been compiled only since 1981.
Before then, viewing figures were estimated using methods that gave conflicting results and were unreliable.
The BBC has also claimed record figures for online interest in the tournament with a record 66.8 million match requests, including live and on demand, on the BBC Sport website and iPlayer.