Wimbledon draws peak of 16.9m viewers in UK; tech glich mars Murray semi

An average of 11.4 million viewers switched on to BBC1’s coverage of the Wimbledon Men’s Singles final on Sunday to see if Andy Murray could become the first Briton to win the title for 76 years. The match hit a peak of 16.9 million as Murray succumbed to Roger Federer.

According to BBC Sport this was the highest peak figure for a Wimbledon final “since at least 1990”, when a 15-minute peak of 9.8 million was recorded, although this is the furthest that accurate audience statistics go back.

TV viewers have been tuning in during this year’s event to follow Murray’s progress as it seemed possible he might win the title and be the first British player to do so since Fred Perry. Unfortunately viewers of BBC One HD were let down during the player’s quarter-final against David Ferrer.

Transmission was lost for up to 20 minutes on the Sky and Freeview platforms at the crucial part of a tie-break. Coverage continued on BBC1 in SD but Twitter and other social media crackled into life as fans complained of the black-out.

The BBC later issued a bland statement: “We apologise for the disruption to viewers during today’s Wimbledon HD tennis coverage, although the game did carry on uninterrupted in standard definition.” SVG Europe contacted the BBC on several occasions for a technical explanation but received no response.