The BBC ballroom contest beat Simon Cowell's talent show after pulling in more than 700,000 extra viewers
Lorna Cooper
14:35, 05 Oct 2015Updated 15:31, 05 Oct 2015
The shows went head to head(Image: ITV/BBC)
Strictly Come Dancing won the ratings war with X Factor on Sunday.
The BBC One ballroom contest easily came out victorious when it went head to head with the ITV talent show for the first time this series.
The results show, which saw former athlete Iwan Thomas get sent home, drew an average audience of 7.83m with a 33.2 per cent share of the total TV audience.
Over on ITV, an average of 7.49m (including those watching on ITV +1) were glued to X Factor's six chair challenge, which achieved a share of 32.4%.
The figure for fans who viewed just on ITV was 7.12m.
During the show Simon Cowell , Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Nick Grimshaw and Rita Ora were given the categories they will be mentoring this series (overs, groups, boys and girls respectively) and Rita selected her final six for the judges' houses stage of the competition.
Rita had a difficult decision to make(Image: Syco/Thames/Corbis/Dymond)
Back in August, X Factor supremo Simon had laughed off any talk of a ratings rivalry with Strictly, joking about the lack of a star-studded line-up.
He had claimed his show could easily beat Strictly, saying: "I'd hate to say yes, because I know what will happen if I say yes, it will come back and haunt me.
"This show does feel better, the talent's great, they're interesting, so if it's us versus Peter Andre , I'm going to put my money on us."
Iwan Thomas got the boot(Image: Guy Levy/BBC/PA)
Despite losing to Strictly once again in the ratings, Simon can take heart from the general upward trend of X Factor's Sunday night ratings.
On August 30, the ITV singing show's first Sunday broadcast aired to an average of only 5.94m viewers (not including fans watching via timeshift on ITV +1).
Simon didn't see it coming(Image: Getty)
Although it has dropped slightly from the 8.69m who tuned in for the glitzy launch, Strictly has so far maintained an audience above 7.6m viewers.
In an attempt to avoid the two series clashing, ITV published episode times for X Factor right up until the final in December.
However, the two shows are set to coincide over the coming weeks.
Peter Andre is one of the contestants(Image: WENN)