Royal Wedding Seen By 25 Million Viewers in UK

April 30, 2011

Early ratings figures suggest that the Royal Wedding was seen by 25 million viewers in the UK with the majority of the audience opting to watch via the BBC.

The wedding between Kate Middleton and Prince William was always expected to draw huge audiences not just in the UK but also around the World. Some estimated that up to 2 billion viewers across the world would watch the ceremony as it was broadcast to various countries not just here in the UK. Now early ratings data for the UK reveal that 25 million viewers were watching the ceremony yesterday with around 18 million watching the BBC’s coverage.

Many viewers watched the events of yesterday unfold from early on with Breakfast seeing a big boost in ratings – usually it has around 1.4 million viewers. The BBC’s output for the majority of yesterday was dominated by the Royal Wedding even though the ceremony itself didn’t start until 11am.

Millions of people watched the ceremony at their homes or at street parties, specially organised screenings in Churches ect or from their work places. While the government declared the Royal Wedding a public holiday not everyone was lucky to have the day off. While schools, officers and banks closed for the day it was business as normal for some workers such as those who work within retail or health care. However, despite it being “business as usual” for some its still expected that many were able to watch the event at their work places.

While ITV and BBC One broadcast the Wedding other channels such as BBC Two, Channel Four and Channel Five had hardly any viewers tuning in with just 0.6% of those watching television opting for those broadcasters.