British Eurosport scored another ratings winner last week, recording the channels highest ever ratings for the World Athletics Championships in Edmonton.
Official BARB Overnights recorded a peak of 457,000 on Tuesday 7th August at 22:45, as studio analysis was provided by Liz McColgan. This beat the previous record of 288,000 during the Olympic Diving Finals from Sydney in September 2000. The programme achieved a market share of 4.5%.
This helped British Eurosport to its highest ever daily average* of 123,000 for the same day. The World Athletics Championships dominated schedules with over 15 hours of coverage on this day. The figures are all the remarkable as the BBC was also covering the event live, plus these highratings are normally reserved for football.
This comes only two weeks after British Eurosport beat the combined audience of SKY Sports 1, SKY Sports 2 and SKY Sports 3 on Sunday 22nd July.
British Eurosport broadcast over 130 hours of coverage from Edmonton throughout the event (5th – 12th August). Studio analysis was provided by some of Britain’s top athletes who could not participate in Edmonton including Katharine Merry, Liz McColgan, Darren Campbell and Julian Golding.
Darren Campbell showed his predictive powers when he said on-air that he thought Marion Jones would be defeated by Zhanna Pintusevich-Block in the 100m, despite being unbeaten in 47 consecutive finals.
Arjan Hoekstra, Deputy Managing Director for British Eurosport commented; ‘Edmonton was a great success for British Eurosport throughout the week. However we were surprised to break our record by such a margin especially when the BBC were also showing wall-to-wall coverage. This proves that we have a loyal band of viewers who, having watched Athletics all year round on British Eurosport, have chosen our coverage over the BBC’s.’
Record figures from Edmonton, the Tour de France and the Australian and French Open’s should help British Eurosport to break it’s total figure for 2000.
For further information please:
Colin Banks
British Eurosport Press Office
0207 468 7777
cbanks@eurosport.co.uk