King Charles III Coronation Viewership Delivers UK Record Ratings

The coronation of King Charles III drew huge audiences both in the United States and across the pond. That’s probably no surprise if you were anywhere close to social media over the weekend. The event drew a considerable amount of buzz, marking the sort of once-in-a-lifetime event that people will recount for years.

Even though coverage of the coronation began early in the day—5 a.m. on the East Coast—it still drew sizable audiences in the U.S. The event drew 11.7 million U.S. households, according to Samba TV, a television technology company that provides analytics.

Samba measured viewing across broadcast and cable networks, including CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC.

While the UK has a much smaller population, a higher proportion of viewers tuned in—not surprising since it was their king getting coronated. Per Samba, total TV viewership on coronation day (Saturday) hit the highest level of any day so far in 2023.

How did viewership compare to other big recent events in the UK? Viewership was up 3% compared to September 8, 2022, when Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles’ mother, passed away. But the coronation viewing was 4% behind UK viewership on the day of the queen’s funeral, September 19, 2022.

“Television audiences came out in droves for the coronation of King Charles, delivering the most-watched day this year in the United Kingdom. The occasion also marked a massive day of viewership on the other side of the pond, with almost 12 million U.S. households tuning into the historic events despite the early morning hours,” said Cole Strain, vice president of measurement products at Samba TV.

Differences Between Older and Young Adults Watching Coronation

Strain noted that older adults ages 65-47 were more likely to watch the coronation than younger ones. They over-indexed on viewership by almost 25%.

So what were younger viewers doing Saturday? Well, they were interested in royals, just not real-life ones. Samba also culled the numbers for another royal-focused show (Netflix’s latest Bridgerton spinoff, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story) and found that millennials were more interested in that one than the real-life historic event playing out on non-streaming TV.

Still, there did seem to be some synergy between the programming, “with almost one in five U.S. households that watched the new Netflix show tuning into the Coronation live, while that number more than doubled in the UK,” Strain said. “Younger audiences in the U.S. were more likely to catch the historical period drama, over-indexing by double digits on Queen Charlotte and under-indexing on the coronation live relative to the average U.S. household.”

Forty-six percent of UK viewers of Charlotte on Netflix also watched the coronation.

In the United States, millennial audiences (adults 25-34) over-indexed by 12% on Charlotte while under-indexing 9% on the coronation.