Almost one million turn to RTÉ

Almost one million people tuned in to RTÉ 2 on Sunday night to watch the penalty shoot-out that decided the World Cup final, but over in Britain, according to unofficial figures revealed yesterday, ITV had a calamitous evening, with just 3.5 million people watching their coverage of the game, compared to almost 20 million for the BBC.

Those figures represented the largest ever gap in ratings between the BBC and ITV for a major sporting event, leaving ITV with its lowest ever share of the audience on such an occasion.

"The figures pushed ITV1's average all-day share below 10 per cent for the first time ever, slumping to just 9.1 per cent," it was claimed.

"The normal ratio-in-viewers between the two broadcasters for shared coverage of a major sporting event is three-to-one in favour of the BBC, but this slumped to five-to-one for the World Cup final."

ITV, whose team of presenter Steve Rider and analysts Terry Venables and Ruud Gullit was based in a studio in London for the final, lost a further 100,000 viewers to the BBC, whose team of Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen, Martin O'Neill and Alan Shearer presented the game from Berlin, when the final went to a dramatic penalty shoot-out.

RTÉ's average audience for the final was 610,000, but that figure rose to 971,000 for the penalty shoot-out - the average audience for the 2002 World Cup final was 546,000, peaking at 787,000.

The final, unsurprisingly, gave RTÉ its largest World Cup audience, with the semi-final between Germany and Italy second on its list.

Two England games (their final group match against Sweden, which ended in a 2-2 draw, and their quarter-final against Portugal which they lost in a penalty shoot-out) also feature in RTÉ's top 10.