ITV sees biggest streaming audience of year for England match

The ITV sports team

England’s FIFA World Cup football match with the USA saw UK commercial broadcaster ITV secure its biggest day of the year for streaming, and its third biggest on record, with 18 million streams viewed.

The streaming viewership was however still dwarfed by ITV1’s overall audience, which saw a peak of 18 million viewers tuning in to see the Three Lions held to a draw in their second match of the tournament.

That total covers all viewers across television and non-TV devices. The audience was higher than for the launch of much-hyped reality show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, making it ITV1’s most watched programme this year.  It also helped make it ITV1’s best Friday in more than a decade.

According to ITV the match attracted the biggest 16-34 audience on any channel this year, with 2.0m and 85% watching.

Across television, an average audience of 11.9m watched the overall coverage of England v USA, with an average of 15.1m watching the full match.

By contrast, only 9.2 million German viewers tuned in to watch their national team lose to Japan on November 23, three times fewer than watch Germany lose to Mexico in Russia four years ago. While the Japan match took place mid-afternoon on a weekday, calls for a boycott of the controversial tournament appear to have gained more traction in Germany than in England.

France’s first match in the tournament against Australia, meanwhile, netted 12.5 million viewers for commercial broadcaster TF1.