Match Point
For those who don't like to watch sport, the weekend of the 9th/10th July must have been TV hell. Across four of the primary channels we had the Wimbledon finals (BBC1 and BBC2), plus the Euro 2016 football final (BBC AND ITV), and the Silverstone British F1 qualifying and actual Grand Prix (CH4). There was also Scottish Open Golf on BBC2. Between them, they took up more than 38 hours of transmission time. This is compared with a weekend average, over the previous 12 months, of just over six hours of sport across these channels.
So what was the effect of all this sport on the performance of these channels? The big winner was undoubtedly BBC1, with its Wimbledon coverage. The channel's total weekend share figure was 33.26%, against a 12-month weekend average of 21.93%. So: Advantage BBC1. BBC2 did not have such an appreciable bump, up to 5.98% from the average of 5.89%, but then the channel did not have the cream of the Wimbledon action.
Channel 4 (CH4) gained just under 1.5 share points over the average, up to 7.14% from 5.69%. ITV was the biggest loser, not featuring any daytime sport action to pull the crowds, and with its Euro 2016 final coverage up against the same match on BBC1, so its all-day figure was down from the average of 13.48% to just 7.39%.
The tennis and football coverage gave BBC1 a particularly high share of viewing from Children 4-15, up from a 12-month average of 10.23% to 21.23%. It also brought BBC1 a much higher share of young adults - aged 16-34 - with 28.67%. This was a big improvement on the benchmark 13.89%. The sports coverage also gained a large share of AB viewers, with a 42.44% across the weekend, compared with an average of 27.01%.
Naturally, there were other losers in this scenario. The Sky sports channels, with no Premiership coverage to compete with the free-to-air sports bonanza, were hit hard. The combined share of Sky Sports 1,2,3,4 was 0.8%: the 12-month weekend average is 3.12%. Similarly, BT Sports channels were down from 0.78% to 0.11%. However, Eurosport, with coverage of the Tour de France, was up from 0.39% to 0.54%, showing the value of such premium annual events.
But overall, it was Game, Set and Match to the BBC.
