A total of 4.6m viewers watched the UK PSB’s live linear coverage of the tournament’s opening weekend.
The 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup got off to a strong start for the BBC, with England’s opener win against the US scoring a peak linear audience of 2.4 million viewers on BBC One.
The opening game on 22nd August, which drew a record tournament attendance of 42,723 at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light, also was streamed 600,000 times on BBC iPlayer, bringing the total figure up to three million.. A day later, Scotland’s 38-8 win over Wales garnered a peak viewership of 1.2 million on BBC One, while Ireland’s victory over Japan on 24th August was watched by a peak audience of 534,000 on BBC Two.
A total of 4.6 million viewers watched the BBC’s live coverage of the Women’s Rugby World Cup’s opening weekend, with 2.1 million streams recorded overall across BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app.
In addition 3.2 million unique visitors accessed the BBC’s Rugby World Cup content on the BBC Sport website and app, with 1.2 million unique visitors counted to engage specifically with its live text pages covering tournament games.
“It’s been a historical summer for women’s sport, and BBC Sport is proud to have been at the heart of it,” said Alex Kay-Jelski, director of BBC Sport. “These record-breaking figures for the opening weekend of the Women’s Rugby World Cup show the growing passion and interest of fans across the UK.
“With all four home nations competing on the world stage, we’re bringing audiences every match, every moment, and the stories behind these inspiring female athletes. And with the tournament just getting started, there’s much more to come.”
UK public service broadcaster (PSB) the BBC is the exclusive broadcaster for the tournament, with every game shown on BBC iPlayer and on the BBC Sport website and app. It will broadcast every knockout game and matches featuring the home nations live on its linear channels BBC One or BBC Two.
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According to Nielsen ratings, NBC averaged 4.49 million viewers for the final round, which is up 34 per cent on the previous year’s average of 3.36 million viewers.
It caps off a strong FedEx Cup post-season, with the final round for the FedEx St Jude Championship drawing 3.6 million viewers for NBC, the event’s highest viewership in 13 years. Meanwhile, the subsequent BMW Championship delivered 3.5 million viewers for its final round, setting a new four-year high.
The strong viewership for the PGA Tour should bode well for NBC as it prepares to broadcast the Ryder Cup next month. The 2023 edition saw the network’s audiences almost halve, with an average of 1.32 million viewers tuning in for the final day.
The roundup:
- Nascar averaged 3.3 million viewers for its regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway on NBC, which was a 37 per cent audience jump on last year’s season finale. BlackBook Motorsport notes that the Cup Series averaged 2.66 million viewers for the 2025 regular season, a decline of 15 per cent on last year.
- The penultimate race of the 2025 IndyCar season averaged 779,000 viewers on Fox, a six per cent year-over-year (YoY) increase. With one race remaining, IndyCar is averaging 1.2 million viewers in 2025, setting the series up for its best year since 2012.
- The New York Yankees’ Sunday Night Baseball win over the Boston Red Sox drew ESPN’s second-largest audience of the Major League Baseball (MLB) season. The broadcast averaged 2.57 million viewers, and peaked at 2.89 million, with viewership up 96 per cent on last year’s equivalent game.
- The opening day of tennis’ US Open averaged 1.06 million viewers on ABC, helping ESPN achieve its highest audiences for the Grand Slam’s first day since 2022. This represented a 78 per cent YoY increase for the network.
- The College Football Classic held in Ireland averaged 4.01 million viewers for ESPN, which was a 20 per cent audience decrease on the previous year’s game. Iowa State’s win over Kansas State peaked at 4.7 million viewers.
- In Italy, DAZN achieved a combined audience of 4.21 million viewers for its opening weekend coverage of Serie A, up six per cent YoY. The streamer shows seven games exclusively each week, with the remaining three co-broadcast with Sky.
- The opening Bundesliga game between Bayern Munich and RB Leipzig delivered an average of 4.32 million viewers for free-to-air (FTA) network Sat.1, achieving a market share of over 30 per cent. Meanwhile, Sky averaged 950,000 viewers for its Saturday afternoon broadcast of Bundesliga games, which was its first without the ‘Konferenz’ whip-around programme. Later, an average of 980,000 fans tuned in for Sky’s evening coverage of St Pauli’s 3-3 draw with Borussia Dortmund on 23rd August.
- In Australia, Nine’s FTA live coverage of Tottenham Hotspur’s win at Manchester City delivered a reach of 1.14 million, with an average national audience of 326,000 also recorded. It was the top rating program of the night for Australians aged between 25 and 54 years old. Nine, which will only air one more Premier League game FTA, said afterwards that it attributed an increase of 100,000 subscriptions for its Stan Sport streaming service to its acquisition of the Premier League rights from Optus.
Credit: https://www.sportspro.com/news/womens-rugby-world-cup-england-us-bbc-tv-viewership-august-2025/
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