Sport boosts iPlayer requests
August 22, 2013
By Nik Roseveare
The BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service recorded 242 million requests in July – up 38 per cent on the same time last year.
Sport boosted live viewing and listening on BBC iPlayer thoughout July, with the proportion of live requests to TV and radio both up month-on-month to 15 per cent and 85 per cent respectively.
A record 77 million radio requests were recorded in July, with requests from mobiles also the highest they have ever been. Listeners took The Ashes on-the-go with them, with 9 out of the top 10 radio requests.
On TV, the new series of Top Gear proved popular, with the first 4 episodes receiving over 2 million requests each. Other top performing programmes included The Apprentice and Luther. The Wimbledon Men’s Final also proved popular with almost 800,000 requests via iPlayer (in addition to those viewed on the BBC Sport site) – the vast majority of which were live streams.
Mobile and tablet requests remained stable month-on-month, comprising 31 per cent of total requests.
Overall, July saw an average 7.2 million daily requests with weekly requests remaining steady at 51 million requests during the month.