Match of the Day has shed hundreds of thousands of viewers since Gary Lineker left the BBC.
Average television ratings for the corporation’s flagship football programme have plunged by more than 10 per cent so far this season compared to the same period a year ago, falling from 2.68 million to 2.39m as viewers flood to the broadcaster’s new online highlights.
A show watched live by up to three million people on Saturday nights during Lineker’s final year as host even went close to dipping below two million viewers on one occasion this season.
Lineker left the BBC in May after sharing an anti-Semitic rat emoji on Instagram, the final straw for an employer which had repeatedly refused to sack a man who had tested its social-media and impartiality guidelines to breaking point.
But by that point the 64-year-old former England captain, whose £1.35m-a-year salary made him the corporation’s highest-paid presenter, had already agreed to step down as Match of the Day host at the end of last season.
He was replaced by a rotating roster of Mark Chapman, Gabby Logan and Kelly Cates, with Wayne Rooney joining them as a new pundit.
This season has also seen the BBC begin posting Premier League highlights on its own website more than two hours before Match of the Day ordinarily airs, risking cannibalising the show’s audience.
Indeed, sources at the corporation have confirmed the clips have been watched by 1.7m people each week on average.
The changes were brought in following the arrival of Alex Kay-Jelski as director of sport last year.
The audience for Match of the Day had been falling even before the departure of Lineker, its longest-serving host.
In his final season at the helm, the August-October period witnessed a drop of more than eight per cent on the 2.92m viewers who watched the show on average during the same window in 2023.
