Nearly two million tune in to ITV for Minella Indo's Gold Cup triumph

ITV recorded its highest Gold Cup peak figure at 1.9 million viewers on Friday and the biggest audience peak for the festival showpiece since the epic Denman and Kauto Star clash in 2008.

The average audience across the week increased by 23 per cent on last year at 1.14m, while the average peak of 1.57m was a 16 per cent rise on 1.35m in 2020.

Minella Indo’s Gold Cup success capped a memorable festival for trainer Henry de Bromhead, who became the first trainer to win the three traditional championship races of the week after Honeysuckle’s Champion Hurdle success and Put The Kettle On’s Champion Chase triumph.

ITV secured the highest audience average for days one, two and four of the meeting since records began in 2003, while Thursday brought the highest day-three average and peak since the meeting was extended to four days in 2005.

There was good news for ITV4’s The Opening Show too, as the hour-long morning preview show grew its audience by 49 per cent on last year at 174,500 viewers, with a peak of more than 250,000 on Gold Cup day.

The Social Stable was a prominent feature of the ITV coverage and #ITVRacing had a huge reach on social media of over 87m, with more than 3.5m video views and one million minutes of content viewed across the ITV Racing social media channels.

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