BBC coverage of FIFA Women’s World Cup semi-final England game hits 7.3m views

The BBC has reported its latest coverage of the England’s semi-final match against Australia during the FIFA Women’s World Cup had a peak TV audience of 7.3 million views on its linear channel.

The highly-anticipated match which aired on the BBC 1 marked the most watched match of the tournament so far.

The football game was also streamed 3.8 million times on the video-on demand platform BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport Online. While match highlights and clips of the game were streamed 2.7 million times across the broadcaster’s digital platforms.

The BBC has split free-to-air coverage of all 64 matches from the tournament with rival broadcaster ITV as part of a media rights partnership with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The deal was signed with the tournament only five weeks out, after FIFA had threatened a Europe-wide TV blackout if rights offers from a number of countries were not upped.

Programming of the tournament kicked off on July 20. ITV secured exclusive live coverage of three of the four FIFA Women’s World Cup Quarter-Finals including the England and Colombia match last week. While, the BBC aired the England versus Colombia quarter-final game on the BBC Radio 5 Live and Sounds. The PSB also provide programming on the Japan’s quarter-final match against Sweden on its channels.

BBC One coverage of England’s World Cup Final against Spain will begin at 10am on Sunday 20 August, with live commentary also available on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds.