18.7 million watch England defeat Wales

18.7 million tuned into watch England defeat Wales 3-0 at the Qatar 2022 World Cup on Tuesday, 29 November.

The peak audience includes linear, iPlayer, and BBC Sport viewers, and is the biggest audience of the competition to date. It also helped iPlayer to its largest weekly audience ever, with a record 165 million streams - up 20% week on week, and breaking the previous high by 12 million streams.

This included 6.3 million BBC account holders under-35 watching BBC iPlayer last week – up 41% week on week, and beating the previous record of five million. Fans saw England knock Wales out of the World Cup, with a brace from Marcus Rashford and one goal for Phil Foden. 

England’s opening match of the World Cup, a 6-2 victory over Iran, also broke a streaming record, with it the largest live streamed event on the BBC over a 24 hour period with eight million.

This week also saw 9.9 million watch Spain and Germany’s draw on the BBC, making it the most watched non-home nation game of the tournament to date.