Premiership Rugby Breaks TV Audience Records

Premiership Rugby can today confirm that the television coverage of Gallagher Premiership Rugby in 2021-22 has shattered previous audience records.

This year’s Gallagher Premiership Rugby Final was the most-watched Premiership Rugby match in their 25-year history, more than doubling the previous high for a Final, while previous season-long BT Sport records were also broken.

For the first time, the Final was broadcast on terrestrial television (ITV4) alongside the league’s long-term partner BT Sport. The game, won 15-12 by Leicester Tigers, was watched by an average audience on ITV4 of 597,000 (peaking at 831,000), and at the same time an average audience of 349,000, (peaking at 480,000) tuned into BT Sport, making it the most-watched Premiership Rugby match ever.

The Final had an average audience of 946,000 (1.3 million peak) – 113% higher than the previous best for a Final in 2009

• Across 2021-22 live average audiences on BT Sport were up 21%, which is also 12% higher than the previous best in 2018-19

  
  

• A cumulative average audience of 14.5 million people watched live Gallagher Premiership Rugby on BT Sport and ITV in 2021-22

• A cumulative average audience of 3.2 million watched Gallagher Premiership Rugby highlights on ITV

  
  

• The 2021-22 season also marked the launch of PRTV Live where all Gallagher Premiership Rugby matches not on BT Sport or ITV were shown live, making every game accessible. The launch exceeded our expectations, and we can confirm it will be back for 2022-23 with plans for fans to be offered a new season ticket.

The Final also had an impressive audience share of 12.6%, across ITV and BT Sport, which means that one in eight people watching TV in the UK last Saturday afternoon were watching the Gallagher Premiership Rugby Final.