A peak audience of 16.2 million tuned in to watch England retain their UEFA Women’s Euro title against Spain across UK broadcasters, the BBC and ITV, to become the most-watched television moment of 2025 in the country.
The BBC said a peak audience of 12.2 million watched England beat world champions Spain on penalties in Basel, Switzerland, last night (July 27) across all BBC platforms, with linear channel BBC One’s coverage peaking at 11.6 million, representing a 59% share of all television viewers.
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Another 4.2 million streamed the match on the BBC iPlayer service and the BBC Sport website and app, while 11.4 million viewed the BBC Sport live page’s text coverage.
ITV’s broadcast of the match, meanwhile, saw a peak audience of 4.2 million across linear channel ITV and streaming service ITVX, with the broadcaster’s overall coverage averaging 2.3 million viewers across all devices.
The commercial broadcaster said the figure represented a 25% viewing share of those watching or streaming the match through a TV, an increase of 5% from its viewing share with the BBC of the Women’s World Cup in 2023.
Overall, ITV scored its highest rating of the year with England’s semi-final victory over Italy, with a peak of 10.2 million across all devices.
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By GlobalDataThe figures come soon after the BBC and ITV announced they will once again split the rights to broadcast the next major international women’s soccer tournament – the FIFA 2027 Women’s World Cup.
Through a domestic broadcast partnership with England’s FA, ITV will broadcast the entirety of England’s qualifying campaign in anticipation of the event.
Those rights add to the pair’s other major international soccer deal to share the rights to the men’s FIFA 2026 and 2030 World Cups.
In Spain, meanwhile, the Women's Euro final, which ended 1-1, was watched by an average of 4.1 million via public broadcaster RTVE’s La 1 channel, with that figure rising to 5.2 million during extra time and peaking at over 6 million for the penalty shootout.
Elsewhere, France’s commercial broadcaster TF1 drew an average audience of 1.72 million, with coverage of extra time switching to sister channel TMC for extra time, which recorded an average audience of 1.88 million.
Along with record TV viewership, UEFA announced a record 657,000 fans attended the tournament in Switzerland, with the number confirmed after 34,203 spectators watched England defeat Spain – the highest-attended match of the tournament.
The previous attendance record was set at the previous 2022 edition of the tournament in England, which stood at 574,875, with the final at Wembley drawing 81,192 – still the record for any European Championship match.
Sell-outs were recorded at 29 of the 31 matches held across eight Swiss cities, with around 35% of all tickets sold to international fans.
Final bids to host the 2029 edition are due to be submitted by 28 August, with UEFA expected to name the host in December.
Germany, Italy, Denmark, and Sweden are among the previous hosts to have expressed interest again, alongside first-time bidders Poland and Portugal.
Last week, during the latest episode of the Sportcal podcast, Hannah Bostock, a senior director at the CAA Sports Brand Consulting division of the heavyweight Creative Artists Agency (CAA), said women’s tournaments would need to keep prioritizing reach over revenue to ensure continued growth.
She said: “We need to be continuing to see it on free-to-air… that’s quite obvious, when you think about it being behind a paywall … We want to increase grassroots involvement in women’s sport and can only do that when young girls can see the action on screen.
“I think free-to-air is really where we should be focusing.”
