Germany World Cup Winners
Bastian Schweinsteiger lifts the World Cup after Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in the Maracana Getty

It's not just Germany who will be celebrating after their World Cup Final win over Argentina, the BBC too have reasons to jump for joy having trounced ITV in the TV ratings battle.

On average 12.1 million watched the advert-free BBC with Gary Lineker at the helm compared to 2.9 million who saw the Adrian Chiles-fronted coverage on ITV.

At 10:30pm a peak audience of 16.7 million watched on BBC One as Mario Götze scored a stunner in extra-time to give Germany victory. With 3.8 million choosing to watch on ITV at the same time, that meant a combined ratings high of 20.5 million viewers.

The BBC traditionally beats ITV in the ratings war but there is a very small silver lining for ITV, who made gains on their figures from four years ago. In 2010, as Spain beat Netherlands with similar pulsating extra-time drama, an average of 3.3 million watched on ITV.

Compared to 2010 the BBC's average rating was down from a 15.1 million average.

BBC One enjoyed a 50.3% share of Sunday evening's TV audience, with ITV having 12%.

Guardian writer John Plunkett also reported that 100,000 chose to watch the final on ITV1's +1 channel.

Even outside of the World Cup BBC won Sunday evening, with BBC Two's showing of Richard Gere film Shall We Dance? attracting a 1.28m audience compared to the 850,000 who watched James Cameron's Titanic on Channel 4 and the 800,000 who watched Big Brother on Channel 5.