Saturday’s (May 19) royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle became the most-watched television event of the year in the U.K.
BBC One, ITV and Sky showed live coverage of the ceremony and wedding procession in Windsor, alongside news channels and an online feed.
The BBC’s flagship channel led the way with an average audience of 8.7 million viewers, peaking at 13.1 million during the ceremony. Over on ITV, the average was 2.5 million, hitting a peak of 3.6 million when the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Sussex left Windsor Castle. Meanwhile, the coverage on Sky News, BBC News and Sky One were seen by averages of less than 500,000 viewers.
The figures mean that, across all channels, peak viewership landed just below the 18 million mark. Those numbers are down on the royal wedding from seven years ago. Prince William and Kate Middleton’s nuptials peaked at more than 19 million viewers on BBC One and 5 million on ITV.
This article originally appeared on THR.