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Record Friday audience for TV opener

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Leicester Tigers' thrilling season opener against Gloucester Rugby achieved a peak audience of 257,000 on BT Sport, the most ever for a Friday night fixture.

The record audience saw Tigers stage the biggest comeback in the club’s 136-year history to kick the season off in style.
 
And for the first time in the history of the competition more than one million people watched the opening round of the Aviva Premiership in the UK and Ireland on BT Sport and ITV Sport.

The competition was also broadcast live on NBC in America for the first time and in a record-breaking 175m households across the world.
 
• 1.057 million people watched Aviva Premiership Rugby in UK and Ireland this weekend on BT Sport and ITV Sport
• The best television audience for an opening weekend, beating 861,000 in 2014
• Aviva Premiership Rugby was live on NBC and available in more than 175 million households across the world for the first time
 
Premiership Rugby commercial director Dominic Hayes: “These figures represent a fantastic start to the new season and show the huge appeal of Aviva Premiership Rugby worldwide.
 
“This season sees a step change in the global reach of Aviva Premiership Rugby.  The competition is now broadcast in more countries, more often than ever before with every single game live on TV somewhere in the world.
 
“We saw matchday attendances rise two per cent in 2015-16 and that trend has continued with a 10 per cent year-on-year rise at Twickenham on Saturday for the London Double Header and impressive crowd figures at other grounds.”