England’s Rugby World Cup final defeat was the most watched British TV event of the year so far, with a peak audience of 12.8 million tuning in to see Eddie Jones’ side lose to South Africa 32-12 on Saturday morning.

Not only did the match on ITV beat the final episode of series five of Line of Duty, which had 12.1m viewers, but it was also the most-watched sports programme on any channel since the 2018 football World Cup. This year’s best figures had been for the Women’s World Cup semi-final between England and USA (11.8m peak), the Wimbledon men’s final (10.4m) and cricket’s World Cup final (7.8m).

At one point 79% of the TV viewing audience across Britain was watching the match – while the average audience throughout game was 8.9m.

And the Rugby Football Union, which governs the sport in England, has told the Guardian it will distribute 10,000 new balls to clubs this week as part of a strategy to help them cope with the expected influx of young people wanting to play the game.

4.5 million Britons watch Cricket World Cup final on Channel 4 Read more

Steve Grainger, the RFU’s development officer, said the move was part of a broader plan to ensure the interest the sport has generated during the autumn was not squandered like many believe it was when England lifted their only World Cup 16 years ago. “There is a view that in 2003 we probably weren’t ready,” he added. “And these days if somebody turns up at a club and they don’t get a good welcome, or they’re a nine-year-old kid and don’t get the opportunity to touch a ball, they won’t come back for the second week.

Play Video 0:34 Rugby World Cup: South Africa crowned champions as England fall short – video highlights

“So over the next couple of weeks our focus is on making sure rugby clubs can cope with the influx of new people and sustain it over time,” he added. “That comes down to the coaching, equipment and having the opportunity to play. We have invested a significant amount of money since before and after we hosted the tournament in 2015 t o improve facilities, and over this next week we will putting 10,000 balls into rugby clubs.”

Grainger also said the RFU would be pushing clubs to become more inclusive to reflect the diversity in the current team, which has players from a wider range of ethnic backgrounds and social classes than in the past.

“Over the next 10 years we want to be a visibly more inclusive sport than we are today,” he added. “We are still largely male dominated and we are still not as representative of the sort of English community as we would want to be or should be.

“We have a lot more diversity in the England team than we have ever had but we want to see that replicated at a local level,” he added. “Big strides have been made the last few years in the number of women and girls playing the game but we want rugby to be seen and recognised as an inclusive sport for all. We’re constantly trying to say to our community rugby clubs that they need to be working really hard to reflect the community in which they are located.”

The dangers of the sport were apparent when the England prop Kyle Sinckler – who was born on a council estate in Tooting – was taken off two minutes into the final after suffering concussion, and Grainger said the RFU would also be doing more to promote touch rugby as part of promoting the sport as part of a healthy lifestyle for older people.

“We have over 35,000 people playing touch rugby and this is going to be a massive growth area,” he added. “We have an increasing non-contact rugby offering because we want people to understand that, if you don’t fancy the contact bit, there are still loads of ways to get a ball into your hands.”

Many of England’s leading players, including Maro Itoje and Owen Farrell, are also expected to attract significant interest from sponsors in the coming weeks but Richard Ayres, a digital marketing expert whose clients include the Premier League, the NBA and Barcelona FC, has warned the sport and the England players need to grab their moment in the sun – or miss the boat.

“One crying shame when it came to the London 2012 Olympics was that people and sports often didn’t convert from reach to retaining audiences and gaining greater revenue,” he said. “The RFU, clubs and players have got to grab the moment. You cannot say, ‘Oh, well, I’ll wait for a few weeks to do something.’ The timing is crucial because, while the Rugby World Cup was fantastic, in the blink of an eye everybody’s attention can flick somewhere else.”