England's Win Over Ukraine Nets Highest TV Audience Of Euro 2012

England's 1-0 victory over Ukraine on Tuesday attracted a five-minute peak of more than 18 million viewers on ITV1, making it England's "most-watched match of Euro 2012 so far," according to John Plunkett of the London GUARDIAN. ITV1's full coverage of England's final group game, which secured them a place in the quarterfinals against Italy on Sunday, averaged 12.7 million viewers, a 50.3% share, between 7-10pm GMT. The match had a five-minute peak of 18.6 million. Live coverage from 7.45pm averaged 16.1 million viewers, a 57% share. The match scored the highest peak audience of any program so far this year. In terms of "overall audience" it trailed the Diamond Jubilee Concert on BBC1, which averaged 14.7 million viewers, a 57.4% share on June 4 (GUARDIAN, 6/20).

HIGH NUMBERS IN FRANCE: In Paris, Olivia Derreumaux reported that broadcaster M6's coverage of France-Sweden was watched by an average audience of 12.2 million people. The ratings were M6's "second best audience scores since their creation" in '86. The broadcaster also had a share of 44.5% during the match compared to their "normal time" audience that usually stays around 10.5% (LE FIGARO, 6/20).

GERMANS WATCHING ALL GAMES: German public broadcaster ZDF keeps generating high ratings for its Euro 2012 coverage. A total of 12.8 million people watched Monday night's broadcast of Spain’s 1-0 victory over Croatia. That’s a market share of 42.2%. While only 480,000 people watched the simultaneously played game between Italy and Ireland on ZDF’s sister channel ZDFinfo and reached a “market share of 1.6 percent,” the match “was the most successful broadcast in ZDFinfo history” (SID, 6/20).