Women’s World Cup sets new UK TV reach record with 17.2 million

The FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019 has hit the halfway stage of the tournament and also a new record for total UK TV reach for a women’s football competition.

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

This is one of the many highlights from an exciting competition that has also seen a record-breaking 6.1m 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 (6.1m), England v Argentina (5.4m), England v Japan (4.7m), France v South Korea (2.2m) and USA v Chile (2m)
• England v Scotland (6.1m) 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 12.4m for the whole tournament in 2015
• Online audiences across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport have seen a total of 6.2m 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

The BBC continues to provide live coverage of every game across TV, radio and online during the Round of 16 stage of the tournament:

Saturday 22 June

• Germany v Nigeria (4.30pm, BBC Two, BBC iPlayer and online)
• Norway v Australia (8pm, BBC Two, BBC iPlayer and online)

Sunday 23 June

• England v Cameroon (4.30pm, BBC One, BBC iPlayer and online)
• France v Brazil (8pm, BBC Four, BBC iPlayer and online)

Monday 24 June

• Spain v USA (5pm, BBC Two, BBC iPlayer and online)
• Sweden v Canada (8pm, BBC iPlayer, Red Button and online)

Tuesday, June 25

• Italy v China (5pm, BBC Two, BBC iPlayer and online)
• Netherlands v Japan (8pm, BBC Four, BBC iPlayer and online)

Barbara Slater, Director of BBC Sport, says: “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 - 17.2m current total reach and 6.1m for England v Scotland - in the opening weeks is extremely pleasing.”