The royal wedding is officially the biggest UK TV event of the year.
In news we all knew was coming but it’s nice to have confirmed anyway, the royal wedding of the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex has officially become the biggest UK TV event of 2018 so far.
Yes, in total a massive 18 million Brits tuned in to watch Prince Harry and Meghan Markle tie the knot at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle yesterday (May 19), with 13.1 million of those all watching BBC’s coverage of the event, according to The Guardian.
The BBC’s programming was led by Dermot O’Leary, Huw Edwards and Kirsty Young, while ITV opted for Phillip Schofield and Julie Etchingham for their coverage, which attracted a peak audience of 3.6 million. Smaller audience numbers also tuned into other channels including Sky News and the BBC News channel to get their royal updates.
The total number of UK viewers is quite a bit lower than the 26 million who tuned into watch Harry’s older brother marry Kate Middleton in 2011, but still, that’s a lot of people tuning into just one event in the UK alone.
And, just to put it into context, Ariana Grande’s One Love Manchester concert became the most-watched TV event of 2017 with an average of 10.9 million viewers.
The global interest in the story – as well as the fact that Meghan herself is an American actress – meant that US TV networks also covered the wedding in great detail, which is likely to push the global audience figure up in to the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
After all, the wedding generated nearly 5.3 million mentions on social media in a 24-hour period, so it’s safe to say people were pretty interested in the occasion.
Harry and Meghan’s wedding ceremony was attending by over 600 guests, including the well-known faces of Oprah Winfrey, Idris Elba, Elton John, George Clooney, David and Victoria Beckham and Meghan’s former Suits co-stars.
The service also featured a performance from 19-year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who has previously featured on Britain’s Got Talent.
