This is where they watched it ...
+++ UPDATE – 9.2M WATCH THE GAME ON BBC ONE +++
They did it, only just, but they made it through to the final 16 of World Cup 2010, and what’s more, the England team have done the BBC a big favour on two fronts.
Not only have the boys guaranteed the Beeb another England ratings success, a plum game on Sunday afternoon to help boost World Cup viewing figures in the battle against ITV, but they’ve given Auntie a record online streaming record in the process.
With today’s game kicking off at 3pm, many fans were unable to get out of the office and in front of a TV to see Jermaine Defoe open his World Cup account, so instead it seems, they waited for the boss to look away and tuned in on the Internet.
The BBC were streaming both video and audio for the game live (to UK users) on their website, and despite some reports of intermittent service and brief outages, managed to attract an estimated record breaking 800,000 concurrent stream peak during the match. That’s the peak number of people who were watching or listening at any one time, and although it includes all BBC streams, it is safe to assume that the majority were tuning in for the big game. This number is not the same as the unique users who logged on, as many people would have dipped in and out of the coverage and that total number is expected to be much higher.
The previous record for highest concurrent streams from the BBC website was set this Monday when 355,000 streamed both World Cup coverage and Wimbledon tennis games at the same time.
Impressive stats indeed for the BBC online audience, I wonder what the numbers will be for the TV audiences, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find that out … but remember, BARB count a pub full of people as one viewer, so if you nipped out of the office to the boozer to watch the game, you might not be represented in those TV stats.
BBC v ITV World Cup ratings wars continue …
