I will await tomorrow night to see how it's rated as the BBC put on a very good show.

And of course in previous years you had the whole evening to vote, this year only 30 minutes and still 1.5 million votes!

The features were good, the show looked good and it never lagged. First time in ages that I felt the need to watch.

I feel this is about as relevant as counting tweets and extrapolating ratings, but "just for fun", as Peter Snow would have said:

2010: 698,234 votes from an average of 7.1m
2011: 341.959 votes from an average of 4.2m
2012: 1,500,000 votes from an average of ????

So on that basis - c14.5m average?




Yes, keep those "famous over-predictions" coming....

was I the only one not watching SPOTY?

In fact, there were 1.6m votes cast, as follows:

Wiggins 492k
Ennis 372k
Murray 230k
Farah131k
Weir 114k
Simmonds 102k
Hoy 42k
Adams 35.6k
Ainslie 35.4k
McIlroy29k
Grainger 28k
Storey 10k

So, no walkover for Wiggo - but a convincing, and fully deserved, winner.


EDIT: Final thought from me - this just feels massive. It's everywhere, all over the internet. Seems to have had far bigger impact and engagement than any other SPOTY I can remember. This must translate into a higher than usual audience?

That's what everyone's been trying to say for most of the evening.

You two are optimists aren't you?


If SPOTY doesn't get an average of 10m would it be a disappointment?


I think it's safe to say it did better than last year's show.


We'll find out tomorrow.

Thought Mo would have been top 3, so did Wiggins. And poor Andy Murray wins a Grand Slam and comes third, Greg Rusedski loses in a Grand Slam final and wins SPOTY that same year with Tim Henman second. Unlucky son.



It seemed like quite a few people that wouldn't normally watch the show tuned in. It could be big but I never trust trending topics on Twitter. Only ratings count. I miss those megawatt power surge ratings of days of old. They were more accurate than Twitter trending topics.

Far more, Hollyoaks trends every episode.

If 7.1m watched in 2010 I don't see 10m being a particularly optimistic prediction at all. This is the conclusion to a massive year of sport and the event itself has been heavily hyped as a result. No competition and a big lead-in - this is going to sweep up casual viewers in a way it never usually would.

I really do think that some producers get far too caught up in a show trending on Twitter than trying to get it to rate well.


Last year was low and the all male shortlist probably didn't help. This year there was British success and lots of it so SPOTY felt more upbeat. It might just make the upper end of the end of year ratings chart.

It's hard to see SPOTY not peaking at least 10m, given that Strictly will have peaked at 10m + during the last 5mins of its broadcast. I would imagine a big rating all the way through really. I'll go for 9.5million average with a 13million 5 minute peak sometime after 10pm.

I'm sure it has some effect (channel flickers wanting to see what everyone's talking about) but like any word of mouth when it comes from mostly strangers, it's residual at best. Though there are other reasons to push a show's hash tag, broadcaster's are always going on about viewer engagement, far cheaper and more beneficial to mention a hash tag that acts as one big easy to access show chat room than develop a red button play along or accompanying mini game in the hope that for some it might add slightly to the viewer experience.

BBC1 has 13 out of the top 20 most-viewed programmes of 2012 according to The Sun today. Based on BARB figures the top-rated show was the Olympics closing ceremony with 24.5 million. Data includes seven day catch-up on digital video recorders to December 9.The Voice UK (11.9 million) came in ahead of TXF (11.4 million)

BREAKING NEWS

Sports Personality of the Year 2012 peaks at 14.48m (57.5%) at 22:25 as the winner is announced.

Peak of 14.48m (57.5%) at 22:25.

SPOTY averaged 10.57m (39.6%), but before hand, Strictly averaged a huge 10.73m (42.5%), peaking with 12.07m (46.0%)!

Jesus H Christ!

That's a staggering peak, and an amazing average over 3 hours!

Take that Cowell - that is event TV!!!

ITV's best effort of the day was 3.31m (3.52m inc+1) for The Making of A Lady. That could actually have been much worse and suggests that it would have been 5m+ in a half decent slot. What a waste.

Yes, Sport Personality averaged a million less than his BGT final, and peaked very slightly below it. Yeah take that Cowell.

In all seriousness though, a stunningly good average for SPOTY with an amazing peak at the end. Thoroughly deserved too.

They would never have expected SPOTY to average nearly 11m though!

I think they'd have known it was going to do very well. Not quite as well as it did but I had it down for a 9m average last night. As soon as they announced they were putting the drama there many posters on here either slammed it as a waste or suggested they were burning the drama off.

As it happens, the drama was apparently pretty good and didn't disgrace itself (especially as it started 30 mins into SPOTY and it had a lead-in of 1.6m from that ET birthday shite!) but it clearly could have done well for them in a decent slot over Christmas.

I was referring to last week's non event TV which did not average 10.6m or peak at 14.5m.

No, it averaged higher!

Really though, it's an amazing result for SPOTY which should be celebrated, not cheapened by taking shots at other shows (which don't stand up to any scrutiny).