Advanced Television

Euro 2016 ensures record June for iPlayer

July 27, 2016

england-footballBBC iPlayer saw an excellent start to the summer with 290 million requests across TV and radio in June, driven by major events in the sporting calendar including Wimbledon and the Euro 2016 football tournament.

This was an increase of 6 per cent on May, and higher than June 2015 by 39 million requests. TV requests increased 9 per cent month-on-month to 229 million, BBC iPlayer’s highest-ever performance for the month of June.

Live viewing grew to 11 per cent of all TV requests, the highest level since mid-2014. And BBC iPlayer (TV and BBC iPlayer Radio) saw the highest ‘unique browser’ reach on record, with an average of 19.9 million unique browsers weekly across June.

The appeal of a ‘Home Nations’ football match, played during office hours. proved a winning combination for BBC iPlayer, with the England v Wales match for UEFA Euro 2016 being, by far, the most requested programme in June, delivering 2.8 million requests.

Top Gear continued to be popular as usual, and new dramas Versailles and New Blood rounded out the top 5 most-requested programmes (along with EastEnders), all delivering well over 1 million requests.

In a similar story for radio in June, the England v Wales match in UEFA Euro 2016 was also the most popular programme (coverage from BBC Radio 5 live Sport, which delivered 263,000 requests for BBC iPlayer Radio).

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