The match, which was marred by scenes of confrontation and on-pitch trouble from Turkey's players, pulled in a total of 4.1m domestic viewers at its height on Sky Sports 1, with an average audience of 3.8m.
The gripping match ended in a nil-all draw, but was still enough to put England through to the European 2004 championships. The match beat the previous record for a multichannel audience, which was a World Cup qualifier between England and Italy in 1997.
Sky Sports 1 beat every other terrestrial channel, other than BBC One and ITV1, vindicating the record £3m that BSkyB paid to broadcast the England qualifier.
Prior to broadcasting the match, there had been trouble over the broadcasting rights, with Sky initially refusing to share the rights with terrestrial broadcasters.
It was only after the intervention of former sports minister Tony Banks and the current minister Richard Caborn, asking departing BSkyB chief executive Tony Ball to share its rights, that ITV won the terrestrial rights.
ITV, the BBC and Five were all interested in screening the match, which was screened live on Sky Sports from 6pm, with ITV broadcasting the match later from 9.30pm, with highlights to follow.
The later ITV1 audience only just managed to beat Sky's record satellite and digital audience, with an figure of 4.5m for the ITV1 highlights.
The figures for Sky, however, do not include those who watched the match in pubs and bars.
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