England match seen by 17 million on TV

Eengland's World Cup exploits continued to break television viewing records on Saturday when 16.8 million people watched the team beat Denmark three-nil.

The figure for domestic viewers, which does not yet take into account the millions who watched in pubs, is the highest for a Saturday lunchtime since the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. It comes after the team's unexpected one-nil victory over Argentina on Friday, 7 June, which, at 13.2 million, attracted the highest daytime television audience registered for a weekday.

The game against Denmark on Saturday also proved to be the most watched match of the World Cup so far, and was a victory for the BBC, which claimed to have trounced ITV on audience share.

The BBC said 80 per cent of those watching Owen, Beckham et al stroll to victory over the unimpressive Danes did so on BBC 1.

More than 12 million people watched the 90 minutes of the match on the BBC, the broadcaster said, with a peak of 13.2 million.

By contrast, only 3.2 million people, peaking at 3.6 million, watched on ITV.

"BBC1 has always been the channel of choice when international football is shown on both the BBC and ITV," a spokesman for the corporation said.

"But the viewing ratio of nearly four in five viewers watching on the BBC shows increasing support for the BBC's football coverage."

The BBC also claimed victory in the battle of the highlights. It said the average viewing figures for its evening highlights programme has been 3.6 million compared with 2 million for ITV.

The figures are a further dent to ITV's reputation for football coverage.

During the last domestic season, viewing figures plummeted for its airing of the highlights of Premiership football – the rights for which it had wrestled off the BBC at enormous cost – after it decided to broadcast them early on a Saturday evening.