Snooker’s Johnstone’s Paint Masters achieved a massive 41.9 million live viewer hours across BBC and Eurosport in the UK, an increase of 4% against last year.
Shaun Murphy won the tournament at Alexandra Palace in London, beating Kyren Wilson 10-7 in the final at the end of eight days of incredible drama at snooker’s biggest invitation event.
BBC alone achieved 39.9 million live viewer hours across 72.5 linear broadcast hours.
On Eurosport, the Pan-European coverage reached 23.7 million individuals across mainland Europe, up 20% on last year.
WST’s social media channels had a giant cumulative global social reach of 41 million, 62% up on last year’s figure.
WST had unprecedented success on its TikTok channel, with over three million views on each of the last three days of tournament, resulting in a 272% increase in TikTok views compared to the 2024 Masters.
Short form video had similar success for WST on YouTube Shorts, with a 271% increase. And engagement was significantly up on WST’s Instagram, by 74%, and on X by 34%.
Ticket sales for the tournament were higher than ever before at Alexandra Palace, with 200 extra seats added to the arena to bring the capacity to 2,200, and virtually every session sold out.
Tom Rowell, WST’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, said: “The Johnstone’s Paint Masters has become a massive world class sporting event and the feedback from players and fans this year was unanimously positive, with so many comments about the incredible atmosphere and fantastic overall experience at the venue.
“It’s great to see this reflected in the digital audience who were clearly gripped by the action with high levels of engagement, particularly around the big moments like Shaun Murphy’s brilliant 147. We are always reaching out to new fans across the planet with a rich variety of digital content.
“Our television audience also remains extremely strong, with the number of hours viewed by individuals hitting 41.9 million. The coverage from both BBC and Eurosport was exceptional.”