ITV enjoyed a fantastic Sunday afternoon after 18.4million people tuned in to watch England’s last-gasp 2-1 comeback victory over Slovakia.
The Three Lions put in another dire performance before Jude Bellingham scored a stunning overhead kick in the 95th minute – and it drew in the channel’s biggest audience of the tournament so far.
Harry Kane’s header put England in front almost straight after the restart.
It is the biggest television audience on any UK channel for 18 months, according to the broadcaster.
Spain’s 4-1 demolition of Georgia, which directly followed England’s match, peaked with 8.9 million, meaning ITV had its best Sunday for over a decade.
The audience was ITV’s biggest since the 2022 World Cup.
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Their previous record for the tournament was the Euro 2024 opener between Germany and Scotland.
An incredible 10.5 million viewers watched the Scots get hammered 5-1 by the hosts.
ITV have shown 16 matches so far and they have been streamed 71million times on their platform ITVX.
England’s opening game of the tournament against Serbia was watched by 15million fans on the BBC.
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ITV and the BBC are sharing coverage of Euro 2024, with England’s quarter-final against Switzerland on Saturday to be shown on BBC One.
Gareth Southgate now has huge questions to answer given the performance of his starting XI for 95 minutes.
Marc Guehi will definitely miss the game, having picked up an early yellow card, but Southgate has question marks throughout his side.
Kieran Trippier, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and even Harry Kane appear at varying levels of risk of being dropped.
If they get past Switzerland – and it’s a big if – they have been handed a much easier route than rival pre-tournament favourites.
On their side of the bracket the other last 16 games are still to take place, with the Netherlands vs Romania and Austria vs Turkey completing the last-16 clashes on Tuesday.
The best of England vs Slovakia
CHECK out all the best action from England’s rollercoaster Euro 2024 last-16 win over Slovakia.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk