The BBC won the ratings battle on sport’s ‘Super Sunday’, achieving a peak audience of 9.6 million for the Wimbledon men’s final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic yesterday.
The match was up against Channel 4 and Sky’s joint coverage of the final of the Cricket World Cup, which saw England beat New Zealand in what is being billed as the greatest one-day match of all time.
A total peak of 8.3m watched the thrilling win across Channel 4, Sky 1, Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket. However, the BBC still won the ratings battle, with a peak of 9.6m tuning in to watch Djokovic beat Federer in a fifth set tie-break to clinch a classic final at Wimbledon.
The peak share of the audience was 46.3% for BBC One. Furthermore, the cricket section of the BBC Sport website had 6.1m unique browsers yesterday, with 4.1m of them coming to the live cricket page. Across the whole tournament, the cricket section attracted 29.6m unique visitors.
Meanwhile, 5 Live’s coverage of the Cricket World Cup reached 1.75m listeners online, with 10.7m online listeners for the tournament as a whole.
BBC Director of Sport Barbara Slater said: “This weekend was a truly fantastic offering of sport and that is wholly reflected in the figures. We are thrilled that so many joined us across our BBC TV, radio and online offering to stay across the action.”
Channel 4 also had live coverage of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, which was won by home favourite Lewis Hamilton. A peak of 3.7m saw the runaway championship leader win a record-breaking sixth British Grand Prix.
Sky had allowed the Cricket World Cup final to be broadcast free to air on Channel 4 following a groundbreaking partnership. The match temporarily moved to More 4 to accommodate the Grand Prix coverage on Channel 4.
