Almost 25 Million Watch England’s Bitter Euro 2004 Defeat

Almost 25 million football fans tuned in to BBC One last night to watch England bow out of Euro 2004 after suffering an agonising defeat at the hands of host nation Portugal.

Unofficial overnight figures from BARB show that a peak of 24.7 million viewers stayed at home to watch the game, which saw England drop out of the tournament after 30 minutes of extra time and an excruciating penalty shoot out.

Audiences for the quarter final clash, which saw Sol Campbell’s winning goal disallowed in the dying minutes of normal time, averaged just over 20.6 million, securing an impressive 73.6% share of the available audience for BBC One between 7:45pm and 10:00pm.

Once again the early evening kick-off time of the crucial match meant that millions of football fans would have followed the action in pubs and bars across the country. However, this so-called ‘lager-in-hand’ viewing is not measured by BARB.

Audiences for last night’s match were easily the highest of the tournament so far, beating England’s Euro 2004 debut against France, which attracted an average of 17.6 million sports fans to ITV1 and generated around £6 million in advertising revenue for the broadcaster (see More Than 20 Million Watch England’s Victory Over Croatia).

Last night’s viewing figures were also higher than England’s historic clash against arch-rivals Argentina in the 1998 World Cup Finals, which attracted a peak of more than 23 million to ITV back in 1998 (see England’s Epic Defeat Gains 26m Viewers).

Euro 2004 is proving to be the most popular football tournament since the 1998 World Cup and audiences are on average 8% up on Euro 2000. However, research carried out by Carat shows that viewing varies widely from region to region and is heaviest in the North of England (see More Than 70% Of UK Watched England Versus France).

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