England’s Women’s World Cup Quarter-final win at the weekend was watched by a peak of 7.2 million viewers on ITV – the biggest audience of the tournament so far.
The Lionesses’ 2-1 win against Colombia, which saw Manchester City’s Lauren Hemp on the scoresheet alongside Arsenal’s Alessia Russo, takes them into the Semi-final and was watched by an average audience of 5.9m across the full time slot of ITV’s coverage. 58 per cent of the available television audience watching on Saturday morning were tuned to the match.
It was ITV’s second biggest peak audience this year, beaten only by the Grand National. It was also ITV’s most-watched women’s football match ever and the biggest on any channel since the Lionesses won the Euros last year.
England v Colombia’s impressive audience draw followed the earlier Australia v France game, also shown on ITV, which was watched by an average audience of 2m and peaked with 3.7m, making it the biggest non-England game of the competition so far.
The audience figures for both yesterday’s Women’s World Cup matches are for those watching ITV1 on TV sets only – streaming data across all devices is not yet available. So far, the tournament has been streamed 13 million times on ITVX.