A peak television audience of more than 14 million saw England beat Panama 6-1 on Sunday to book their place in the World Cup knockout stages.

The BBC announced on Monday that 14.1m watched on BBC One – an audience share of 82.9 per cent – and there were 2.8m live stream requests across BBC online.

England’s opening group game, when Harry Kane scored a stoppage-time winner against Tunisia, remains the most watched programme in 2018 with a peak audience of 18.3m, more than the Royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Captain Kane scored a hat-trick against Panama in Nizhny Novgorod as England progressed to the knockout stages with their biggest-ever win at a World Cup finals.

After a group stage exit at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the humiliating defeat to Iceland at the 2016 European Championships, England supporters’ optimism is growing for Russia 2018.

John Stones scored twice and Jesse Lingard was also on target for Gareth Southgate’s men, who play Belgium in their final Group G contest on Thursday in a match to be broadcast on ITV.

The BBC said the average match audience was 12.8m; it was 16.6m for the Tunisia win. Those figures do not include the audience for the build-up and post-match coverage.

Figures also do not account for those watching in pubs, on big screens or large gatherings at home.

The Royal wedding had an average audience of 11.5m for the whole programme, while the Britain’s Got Talent final, on ITV, had an average of 11.2m viewers for the duration of the programme.