Women's Rugby World Cup attracting huge TV and social media audiences

Ahead of the Women’s Rugby World Cup quarter finals weekend, the BBC revealed that the live TV audience for the group stages of the tournament reached 7.1 million.

While that is an impressive statistic, in an area of online channels, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Numbers for digital channels show that the World Cup really does mark a landmark moment for women’s sport:

Games have been streamed on the BBC iPlayer and Sport apps, attracting a combined 5.8m views so far.

The BBC Sport website has provided coverage of all matches with the most popular being England v USA with 757,000 views.

Overall, BBC Sport World Cup content has attracted more than 20 milllion views on social media alone.

The response to the Women's Rugby World Cup so far has been phenomenal. These figures reflect not only the growing appetite for the women's game, but also the impact of our commitment to telling these stories in fresh, creative and digitally accessible ways.

Alex Kay-Jelski, Director of BBC Sport

In terms of individual content across social media, the top clip of on-field action so far is England’s Ellie Kildunne setting up Jess Breach for a try in the win over the USA with 1.41 million views.

Off the pitch, the powerful clip of America's Ilona Maher talking about issues around food and body positivity has garnered 2.2 milion views across BBC Sport TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.

With the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals being covered on BBC terrestrial channels, as well as on iPlayer, by its end the tournament looks certain to have delivered record engagement across all media outlets.