World Cup 2026: BBC Sport reaches record numbers of fans

Everyone at the BBC wanted to thank you as an incredible World Cup comes to an end.

Thanks to the 42.8 million people who watched our live match coverage on television or streamed the game 237 million times on iPlayer, the BBC Sport app and website. That’s a lot of football.

You were one of the 24 million who watched England v Argentina in the semi-final, the late 9.1 million who stayed up until 4am for England v Mexico, the 2.4 million who watched Scotland beat Haiti at midnight, or part of the hardcore crew of half a million who watched Iran v New Zealand four times. Thriller

Thanks to those who put their trust in us for not ruining your mornings, coming to iPlayer or the BBC Football YouTube channel every day for our eight-minute highlights package. There were so many of you that we saw the biggest day and week in the history of iPlayer.

Thanks to the 57.2 million unique browsers who used our app and website 1.7 billion times, watched our games, interviews and journalism clips, followed our amazing live pages and read stories from our journalists, from the Trump-FIFA-Balogan scandal to tactical trends and the denial of US entry to Somali referee Omar Artmar.