Last night's Champions League final on ITV1 attracted nearly 3m viewers more than BBC1's FA Cup final show two Saturdays ago, even though the match was contested by two foreign teams.
Real Madrid's 2-1 victory over Bayer Leverkusen was watched by 6.8 million viewers - a third of the available audience - between 7.30pm and 9.50pm.
ITV's audience for the match, won for Real Madrid by French striker Zinedine Zidane's sublime volley, peaked at 7.9 million between 9.30pm and 9.45pm.
It put the BBC1's FA Cup final coverage into the shade.
It drew an average of just 4.1 million viewers and a peak of 7.4 million when it was screened on May 4.
The ratings for the FA Cup was a record low and bewildered many TV executives.
ITV1's Champions League Final Live easily beat the BBC1 opposition, including golden jubilee documentary Queen and Country, which had 4.9 million viewers between 8pm and 8.55pm.
Caroline Aherne's bittersweet new comedy, Dossa and Joe, was thumped by the final episode of Channel 4's bawdy romp, Teachers, on its BBC2 debut last night.
Dossa and Joe, shot in Australia and starring Anna Charleston and Michael Caton, had just 1.5 million viewers and a 7% audience share between 10pm and 10.30pm.
Teachers, which ended its second series with the main cast members leaping into bed with each other after the staff Christmas party, had 2.4 million viewers and a 14% audience share between 10pm and 11pm.
BBC2's reality show, The Experiment, was beaten by the Channel 4 opposition for a second night on the trot.
The Experiment took 1.5 million viewers and a 7% audience share between 9pm and 10pm.
It was soundly beaten by Channel 4's US drama import, ER, which took 2.8 million and a 13% share between 9pm and 10pm.
RI:SE is still bumbling along with just 200,000 viewers, but the audience share for the new Channel 4 breakfast show has crept up from 3% to 5%.
