England beat Mexico 3-2 in the World Cup knockout round early Monday morning, and the television numbers were massive: 9.1 million people watched it on BBC channels at the moment when the most viewers were watching. That's a record for any UK broadcast between 2am and 4am, according to the Guardian. About 7.8 million people watched the whole match on average.

The game started at 2am BST on Monday — an hour later than planned — after Jude Bellingham scored twice and Harry Kane added a penalty goal. Before this, the 2am-to-4am record was held by the Rio 2016 Olympics, when just over 3 million people watched Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis-Hill, and Greg Rutherford win gold medals. The England match had more than three times that audience.

Why does this matter? Sports matches late at night normally lose lots of viewers. Most people don't want to wake up at 2am, so the BBC expected many viewers to skip the live broadcast and watch replays or highlights later instead. But this match didn't follow that pattern. The BBC made a smart choice: they offered two options. You could either stay up and watch at 2am, or watch a fresh, spoiler-free replay the next morning at 07:10 on BBC Two. This two-path strategy seemed to work. A BBC Two replay the next morning drew 1.1 million viewers at peak, with 900,000 watching on average — big numbers in their own right. The match was also available in ultra-high definition on BBC's iPlayer app, according to BBC information.

Beyond just television, the online numbers were huge. The BBC's streaming service iPlayer set a new record with 48 million requests that single day. The BBC Sport website and app together got 15 million visitors — their largest day ever. People also read BBC's live text updates of the match 18.6 million times worldwide. England's entire tournament run generated 11.6 million requests on streaming platforms, higher than any football tournament the BBC has ever shown.

Social media clips were even bigger. BBC Sport videos reached 330 million views across platforms that day. One clip — Harry Kane's post-match chat with BBC reporter Kelly Somers, after he'd lost his voice — got 65 million views by itself. Highlight videos were watched 5.9 million times across iPlayer, websites, apps, and YouTube.

This all shows something important: the way people watch sports is changing. Online streaming and social media now matter more than regular television channels alone. Ten years ago, a 2am game would have been considered a disaster for viewership. Now, this match proves that people will still watch live, even at odd times, as long as you give them options and they care about the game. England versus Mexico mattered because it was a knockout round — one loss and you're out — and because Mexico was hosting the World Cup.

Before the match, experts had questioned whether England relied too much on Harry Kane to score goals, per Reuters. Mexico had arrived at this stage after beating South Africa 2-0 at the start of the tournament, according to AP's coverage, giving them home advantage and their own large audience watching at home.

For the BBC, these numbers show that people still value watching big sports events live, even if they're watching on phones, computers, and streaming apps instead of just sitting in front of their television at a normal time.