Carlos Alcaraz’s ‘annihilation’ of Novak Djokovic leads to huge drop in BBC viewing figures for Wimbledon men’s final

The BBC has released disappointing viewing figures for the 2024 Wimbledon men’s final with the number of people tuning in for the match between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic well down when compared to last year.

In a repeat of the 2023 final, Alcaraz and Djokovic squared off again in the showpiece match at the All England Club and, although the result was the same with the Spaniard successfully defending his title, the encounter itself didn’t follow the same script.

Last year Alcaraz defeated Djokovic in five sets in a match that lasted four hours and 42 minutes, this year the Wimbledon final was all over in two hours and 28 minutes as the 21-year-old secured a 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (7-4) victory to win his fourth Grand Slam.

It was such a lop-sided match that former British No 1 Tim Henman told BBC TV “it was an annihilation” and it was pretty clear from the get-go that there was only going to be one winner with Djokovic struggling on the day.

Unsurprisingly the BBC has recorded a big dip in figures with the final peaking at 7.6million viewers on TV – well down to the 11.3m who tuned in last year. There was also a drop in streams as in 4.1m people watched on BBC iPlayer last year while only 3.3m did so on Sunday.

The 2023 peak audience was the largest since Andy Murray defeated Milos Raonic to win his second Wimbledon title with 13.3m people tuning in 2016.

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This year’s women’s final had a smaller decrease as the peak audience for Barbora Krejcikova’s victory over Jasmine Paolini was 4.1m while last year 4.5m tuned in. There was an increase in streams as 1.9m viewers tuned in on iPlayer on Saturday while that figure was 1.3m in 2023.

But the men’s figures stack up well compared to 2022 when 7.5m people tuned in for the Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios final while in 2019 that figure was 9.6m when Djokovic defeated Roger Federer in five sets.

The fact that England played in the Euro 2024 final against Spain later in the day also affected the BBC’s numbers with many viewers focusing on the football throughout the day, but there was also a drop in overall figures.

The BBC recorded a peak audience of 17.8million for the match with Spain winning 2-1 while ITV recorded figures of six million. The combined 23.m viewers were the highest combined audience this year, but it is well down on the 31m from four years ago when England lost the Euro 2020 final against Italy.