England's resounding 6-2 win over Iran in Monday's World Cup opener set a new BBC record, Gary Lineker has revealed.
Gareth Southgate's side stormed to the top of Group B after thumping Iran courtesy of goals from Jude Bellingham, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Jack Grealish and a brace from Bukayo Saka.
And Lineker tweeted on Tuesday to reveal that the game, which was screened on BBC One and the iPlayer, had smashed the channel's previous viewing figure records.
The BBC Sports anchor said: "England's World Cup 2022 lunchtime opener against Iran was watched by 8.1 million and was streamed an incredible 8 million times on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport online, making it the largest live-streamed event on the BBC over a 24 hour period ever. Watching at work eh?"
Although the game shattered records for the BBC, the showpiece event didn't quite go off without a hitch. Lineker was forced to apologise during the half-time interval due to a number of technical issues that had affected people who were watching on iPlayer.
Lineker explained at the break: "Just a quick pointer, apologies if you've had any BBC iPlayer issues during that first half. We're working to fix them."
The BBC also addressed the issues in a statement after over 10,000 issues were lodged with outage tracking website Down Detector. The statement read: "We're aware of an issue affecting some users on BBC iPlayer. We're trying to fix this as soon as possible."
Fortunately, the issues weren't severe enough to put a dampener on England's dream start to the tournament in Qatar.
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The thumping win over Carlos Queiroz's side was enough to end the six-match winless run that had hung over England in the build-up to the tournament - and Southgate was pleased with the overall performance.
"I'm a bit fed up with the end of the game really," Southgate said after watching his side concede twice after half-time. "Look, to win by that margin, to play as we did for the majority of the game, I have to be really happy. That's the way the players have prepared, they looked ready.
"We felt we wanted to be that type of team. They dealt with the game really well, it was a sticky first half, with lots of stoppages, but we were a real threat throughout that and our pressing and movement was really good.
"So I've got to be very happy but we shouldn't be conceding two goals at that stage of the game and we'll have to be on it against the States [USA]. It's a great start but we're going to have to be better."
