A peak audience of 13.05m in Britain saw the thrilling F1 title decider on Sunday. The average audience of the live broadcast was 8.75m. It was ITV’s highest audience for an F1 race, and their final live broadcast of the sport.
It’s almost twice as much as the next most-watched race, the British Grand Prix, which attracted 4.53m. That aired on the same day as the Wimbledon final, which was watched by 7.57m on BBC1.
The Japanese and Chinese Grand Prix attracted far smaller audiences, mainly because they were broadcast early in the morning. Neither of them ranked in the top 30 programmes on ITV1 in the week they were broadcast, and had audiences smaller than 3.25m and 3.47m respectively. However, these races were also shown again ‘as live’ in the early afternoon.
ITV’s website also had a huge surge in traffic on Sunday from viewers catching up with the action.
More information: 2008 ITV F1 TV audience figures
chaostheory
4th November 2008, 21:22
I’m curious:
Any world wide statistics?
And what is the best GP of all times in terms of TV audience?
Boyce
4th November 2008, 21:32
I think the most watched GP ever was the one after Senna’s death.
stevepCambsUK
5th November 2008, 11:14
heres a few links, theres not much recent specific info around about viewing figures
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/1842217.stm
http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/media_matter/matter_010406.asp
http://www.fia.com/resources/documents/887837386__22_02_2000_F1_TV_Figures. (pdf) delete brackets to see pdf file
yeah that was the Monaco gp after sennas death, not sure of viewing figures tho
michael counsell
6th November 2008, 20:11
This is why Brazil has been the last race for the last few years as it is as the ideal time for European viewers.