BBC release statement as Match of the Day figures emerge after Gary Lineker's bitter exit

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Match of the Day has lost more than 10 per cent of its viewers since Gary Lineker left the BBC . The ex-Leicester and Tottenham forward bid farewell to the British broadcaster at the end of last season.

Lineker had been the lead presenter of Match of the Day for 26 years before departing his role back in May. The 64-year-old had been due to remain at the BBC and host their coverage of the FIFA World Cup in 2026, but an agreement was reached for him to leave earlier than expected and without a payoff.

He exited the BBC after sharing an anti-Semitic rat emoji on Instagram , the final straw for the broadcaster, who had refused to sack him despite testing their social media guidelines to a boiling point.

Mark Chapman, Gabby Logan and Kelly Cates replaced Lineker as a rotating roster for the 2025/26 season and beyond, with Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney joining them as a new pundit.

In the two months since the start of the new Premier League season, the BBC have seen viewers on their flagship football programme fall from 2.68 million to 2.39 million, as per The Telegraph .

That is down 10 per cent from last season, though it's claimed that some viewers have instead flocked to the broadcaster's new online highlights on BBC iPlayer instead.

This season, the BBC have also started posting Premier League highlights on its own website more than two hours before Match of the Day airs, risking reducing the audience's numbers.

Sources at the corporation told the report the clips have been watched by 1.7m people each week on average. Those changes were brought in after Alex Kay-Jelski arrived as director of sport last year.

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Match of the Day's figures had been falling even before the departure of Lineker as its longest-serving host. During his final season, the period between August and October saw a fall of more than eight per cent on the 2.92m viewers that were present at the same time in 2023.

The drop that Match of the Day has experienced is in line with falling television ratings on a broader basis. This season, the show has attracted an average of 34.8 per cent of people watching television, up on the same period for the previous two years.

The BBC said in a statement: "We don't judge success based on overnight ratings in an on-demand world . A significant portion of the Match of the Day audience now watches on BBC iPlayer, the UK's fastest growing streaming, video on demand platform.

"This isn't a decline. It's adapting to changing audience behaviours as we all should be. Match of the Day is reaching more people across multi-platforms."

The BBC played down the relevance of Match of the Day's dropping television ratings, stating that a high percentage of the programme's audience now watch it on iPlayer.