Who Were the Big Winners on the U.K.’s X Factor?

For once, it wasn’t Simon Cowell (though, of course, paradoxically, it was).

Britain’s TV viewing was dominated over the weekend by the juggernaut that is the X Factor (a show heading to U.S. screens soon!). Unsurprisingly, it was won by the bookmakers (and housewives) favorite, the former painter-decorator Matt Cardle, who defeated Liverpudlian lass Rebecca Ferguson in the final. Earlier Sunday, Cowell’s boy band group, One Direction (each of the judges mentors an act) continued the show’s streak of never producing a victorious act, as the boys came third. The night before, Cher Lloyd, a teenager despised in the tabloid press for acting as if she was already a diva, left the process in fourth place (inevitably, she was the most distinctive finalist). Cowell was visibly displeased with the public’s decision. The working man done good defeating the single mother is an understandable story arc. A group can’t hope to achieve that, because the viewer never gets to know them as individuals.

(See TIME’s best TV shows of 2010.)

While Cardle wins a £1 million ($1.6 million) recording deal with Cowell’s Syco record label, the real beneficiary of the 27-year-old’s triumph looks like being Scottish indie outfit Biffy Clyro. In previous years, the finalists all sang the same cover version with the winner’s version being the one released to, usually, Christmas chart-topping acclaim. But this time, the acts were given free reign to choose their own song and Cardle picked his favorite band’s ballad, “Many of Horror (When we Collide).”

If Cardle sells a similar number to 2008 winner, Alexandra Burke’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (the 2009 Christmas number one went to an anti-X Factor internet campaign championing Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing In The Name”), then Biffy Clyro could net £25,000 ($40,000) in writing royalties from sales, and £125 ($200) each time Cardle’s cover is played. There should also be a considerable spike in sales for Biffy Clyro’s back catalog and, in a late contender for quote of the year, the band’s spokesman said that they were “not averse” to what was going on.

The other big winner was the TV network which airs the show, ITV. The peak audience Sunday was close to 20 million, which equated across the two-hour finale to an average viewing share of 55% of the available audience (the high was 60% which is simply staggering in a land of 60 million people). ITV has undergone some tough times of late but the main commercial rival to the BBC has not just been buoyed by the success of X but, naturally, the huge advertising revenues which, in proportional terms, has rivaled Super Bowl Sunday.

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But if Cowell can replicate comparable numbers when the show makes its Stateside debut on Fox next year — and it’s strongly rumored that his U.K. host, Dermot O’Leary, and favorite judge, Cheryl Cole, will be joining him — then he won’t bemoan his One Direction boys missing out. Indeed, the only direction Cowell will be headed is to the nearest bank to deposit all his earnings.