​Gabby Logan, Wayne Rooney, Joe Hart and Micah Richards broadcast live from the BBC studio at the MetLife Stadium during the World Cup final – BBCThere was delight – and no little relief – at the BBC after the television ratings for the World Cup final came through.The corporation had boosted its share of the audience for a major international football final in the first tournament since Gary Lineker left, with more than 80 per cent of the 19.6 million people who watched Sunday’s showpiece tuning into its coverage.As well as appearing to vindicate the decision to jettison Lineker, the ratings demonstrated the value of being present in the flesh at a major event, with the BBC sending presenter Gabby Logan and pundits Wayne Rooney, Joe Hart and Micah Richards to the MetLife Stadium, while ITV bizarrely kept its own top team at its studio in Brooklyn. Nothing summed up the corporation’s late triumph better than when Rooney stole the World Cup show by calling the half-time musical interlude “crap”.”What did you think of the World Cup final half-time show?”Wayne Rooney: pic.twitter.com/1j6OQap9Yi— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) July 19, 2026Before that, it felt as if BBC had completely hamstrung itself with its “work-from-home” World Cup and refusal to fly its biggest stars to the US until the semis, particularly when comparing its coverage to that of its arch-rival.Its build-up to the tournament was dominated by December’s news that its studio would be not in New York, Los Angeles or Miami, but Salford and that its presenters and pundits would not fly out until the final week. Lineker poured salt on the wound in April, saying he was happy his sacking by the corporation had freed him to spend the tournament in New York rather than “in Salford in a green box”.Logan later responded by pointing out that the BBC won a Bafta for its coverage of last year’s European Women’s Championship final following a similar approach to that tournament.Telegraph Sport attended the grand unveiling of the new studio two days before the World Cup began and it proved to be anything but a “green box”. Instead, it featured a panoramic LED screen that created the illusion that the studio overlooked whichever of the 16 host cities a match was being broadcast from.Alex Kay-Jelski, the BBC’s director of sport, said not building a studio in the US had saved licence-fee-payers millions of pounds. It took ITV barely 24 hours to show up its rivals after unveiling its jaw-dropping rooftop studio overlooking New York before England’s final warm-up friendly against Costa Rica. “You are thinking it must be AI,” Mark Pougatch, the presenter, said. “I promise you it is real.”The comparison became starker upon the BBC’s own studio making its television debut two days later, with the images shown on its LED screen looking far more artificial than they had in person. Telegraph Sport was also told ITV did not believe it would have saved “millions” by bas