Scotland's play off victory watched by over 2.6million

Scotland’s penalty-shootout victory over Serbia in the Uefa 2020 European Championships playoffs drew an average 1.48 million viewers on Sky’s channels after the UK pay-TV network made the broadcast free-to-air (FTA).

With the game broadcast on the Sky One and Pick channels, a peak 2.6 million viewers tuned in for the game’s climax at around 10.20pm (local time) on 12th November, garnering a 63 per cent Scottish audience share.

Sky Sports, Uefa’s UK broadcast partner for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland internationals, drew its largest viewership for a Euro 2020 qualifier.

The network also scored strong audience figures for Northern Ireland’s exit at the hands of Slovakia, with an average of 257,000 viewers tuning in across its Sky Sports Premier League and Challenge channels.

The match peaked towards the end of extra-time at 10.10pm (local time) with 563,000 viewers tuning in, delivering an audience share of 30 per cent in Northern Ireland, and making it the second most-watched broadcast nationally in that timeslot.

Stephen Van Rooyen, chief executive of Sky’s UK and European operations, said that making its Scotland and Northern Ireland matches free was “the rights things to do” during “unprecedented, challenging times”.

Sky Sports’ digital and social media platforms also scored impressive figures for related content, with more than four million video views for match highlights and post-match interviews.

More than one million viewers watched the highlights of the Scotland and Northern Ireland matches via the Sky Sports YouTube channel. Scotland’s victory drew 816,000 views while 101,000 watched the recap of Northern Ireland’s defeat.

On Twitter, Sky Sports channels had more than 1.7 million content views from the Scotland and Northern Ireland matches, with an additional 227,000 views also coming via the broadcaster’s website and app.

On Facebook, total content views exceeded the 1.4 million mark for both matches. Additionally, more than 400,000 chose to follow the SkySports.com live blog for the Scotland encounter, while another 220,000 followed the latest for the Northern Ireland match.