The England vs Denmark match drew almost 30 million viewers on Tuesday evening, making it the most-watched soccer match ever shown on one network in the U.K.
The teams battled it out during the semi-final match at Wembley Stadium in London.
And in a result that shocked even its most ardent fans, England managed to break the fabled “ITV curse” to triumph over their Danish counterparts, scoring two goals to Denmark’s one.
Ahead of the match, number crunching-soccer fans calculated that, over the last 23 years, England have only won five matches when they are broadcast on ITV compared to 15 on the BBC.
At the peak of the match, ITV recorded an 89.3 percent audience share with 27.6 million viewers across ITV, ITV Hub and STV tuned in to watch England break the curse.
The figure is larger than the England World Cup Semi-Final in 2018, when England lost 2-0 to Belgium (on ITV) and the biggest viewer peak in any genre since the Olympics were broadcast in 2012.
Between 6.30pm and 11.24pm, the average audience for the match was 16.7 million viewers, giving ITV a whopping 70.6% audience share.
A further 0.4 million watched the matches on other devices, bringing the total to 17.1 million.
ITV Hub recorded 10.5 million streams and STV PLayer 0.5 million.
Last month’s England vs Scotland game, which was a draw, drew 20 million viewers across ITV and STV and 4.8 million streams across ITV Hub and STV Player.
England will now face Italy in the finals on Sunday 11 July, which will be broadcast by both the BBC and ITV.