SBS scores half a million viewers for England v Croatia

More than half a million people in Australia watched Croatia’s triumph over England, despite the early morning kick-off.

More than half a million people in Australia watched England’s fairytale run in Russia come to an end despite the early-morning kick-off.

England v Croatia was watched by a peak audience of 605,00 viewers on SBS as an extra-time goal from Mario Mandzukic saw Croatia into their first-ever World Cup final.

Between kick-off at 4am AEST and the final whistle the average audience was 420,000 viewers on Thursday.

France v Belgium, in which Les Bleus went through to the final with a 1-0 win over Belgium following Samuel Umtiti’s second-half header, pulled in an average audience of 276,000 viewers.

Both semi-finals shattered records in Britain and France, underscoring why commercial broadcasters — and, more recently, tech giants such as Amazon and Facebook — are willing to shell out record amounts for live coverage of leading events.

In April, free-to-air network Seven and subscription television broadcaster Fox Sports struck a $1.182 billion media rights deal with Cricket Australia.

In a world of on-demand service, viewers increasingly skip ads and watch shows at a time of their choosing.

For big advertisers, live sport offers certainty in terms of ratings and a rare opportunity to tap into millions of viewers experiencing the same exhilaration and the same agonies in real time.

A staggering 26.6 million people watched England’s defeat on Britain’s ITV. The average audience was 24.3 million, the highest average audience for a single game ever, according to ITV.

In France, 19.1 million viewers on average watched the match on TF1, with the audience peaking at 22.3 million.

On the other side of the coin, early World Cup rounds on US network Fox drew nearly a third fewer viewers than in the 2014 edition of the quadrennial tournament. The soft ratings are being blamed on the absence of the national team, which failed to qualify for the tournament for the first time since 1986.

Fox is now expected to lose money on the 2018 rights.

In Australia, France and Croatia will battle it out in the early hours of Monday morning, with kick-off at 1am AEST for local viewers. England and Belgium will play off for third place in St Petersburg on Saturday evening at midnight.