Euro 2008 final scores 10.7m

Euro 2008

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Spain's 1-0 victory against Germany in the final of Euro 2008 gave a bumper audience to BBC1 with the match averaging a strong audience of 10.7m (42.2%) from 7.45pm.

The audience steadily built throughout with the first half averaging 9.8m (40.1%) and the second securing a hefty 11.5m (43.7%) with the audience peaking in the final 15 minutes with 12.1m (45.9%) between 9.15pm and 9.30pm.

The corporation's entire coverage, which began at 6.55pm and continued to 10pm drew an impressive average audience of 8.9m (37.6%).

Male viewers were, by far, a sizeable audience attracted to the game with men making up 60.7% of the audience. ABC1 viewers were also watching in sizeable numbers as 47.9% of the audience came from this demographic. Younger viewers weren't quite so impressed but those aged between 16 and 34 still made up a sizeable 22% of the audience.

The Euro 2008 final, unsurprisingly, swept all before it. Not even the usually robost Top Gear on BBC2 crumbled under the pressure.

The new series of the motoring show kicked off last week with 6.1m (24.3%) in its usual 8pm slot. Last night (29 June) though a relatively poor 4.7m (18.1%) tuned in for an hour.

The BBC2 show though still managed to secure second place as ITV1's The Royal took 4.3m (16.7%), a fall of 800,000 on the previous week.

Further down the field was Channel 4's 1997 film The Land Girls at 7pm which pulled in 1.4m (6.2%) with a further 78,000 preferring to watch the British film on C4+1 an hour later.

Over on Five at 8pm its Extraordinary People strand managed 496,000 (1.9%).

Once Top Gear had ended viewers turned away from BBC2. It's re-run of Jeremy Clarkson: Greatest Raid of All Time managed 2.3m (8.7%). The show was outperformed by C4's Big Brother highlights show with 2.5m (9.6%) with an extra 515,000 watching on C4+1. Five's clip show repeat of the Greatest Ever Romantic Movies from 9pm seduced 813,000 (4.2%).

ITV1's repeat of Taggart proved to be the strongest challenger to the football final but could only manage 3.7m (15.1%) for 90 minutes.

All hours shares for Sunday 29 June 2008: BBC1 – 25.6%, ITV1 – 11.7%, BBC2 – 9.7%, C4 – 7% (C4+1 – 0.9%), Five 4.5%, multichannel – 40.5%.

Peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) shares: BBC1 – 34.3%, ITV1 – 10.9%, BBC2 – 10.9%, C4 – 7.6% (C4+1 – 0.6%), Five 4%, multichannel – 27.5%.