Ronnie O’Sullivan’s seventh World Championship title win watched by 4.5MILLION people on BBC Two

The moment Ronnie O’Sullivan clinched his record-equalling seventh World Championship title was watched by a whopping 4.5million people on BBC Two.

It was the highest peak audience of any TV programme on Monday night, including Coronation Street, which was on ITV1 at the same time.

BBC bosses are understood to be delighted by the figures, with the last session of the Crucible final attracting an average of 3.1m viewers. The BBC iPlayer also had 921,000 live programme requests for the match between O’Sullivan and Judd Trump throughout Monday.

The 4.5m peak figure is 100,000 more than the number who tuned in to Channel 4 for the final lap of last year’s dramatic Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, when Max Verstappen pipped Lewis Hamilton to the Formula One title. It also matches Channel 4’s peak audience when England won the 2019 Cricket World Cup final against New Zealand at Lord’s.

Both the F1 and cricket were also shown live on Sky Sports on those days, but the BBC’s snooker coverage had competition from Eurosport.

In 1985, a record-breaking 18.5million stayed up past midnight to watch Dennis Taylor beat Steve Davis in the famous black-ball final.

BBC iPlayer also had 921,000 live programme requests for O’Sullivan’s win over Judd Trump