Although Saturday’s peak of 8.5 million was on a par with primetime hit shows and soaps, it was just a third of the audience that tuned in to ITV last Wednesday when it looked like England were on their way to the final.
The scaling-back of public interest extended to the final itself, which was contested between France and Croatia and was shown on both major terrestrial channels.
As is usual, the BBC outperformed ITV with its programming attracting an average of 7.9 million viewers to ITV’s 2.5 million. Viewing figures for the length of the match itself were slightly higher, at 2.83 million for ITV.
