Advanced Television

Glastonbury, election boost live iPlayer requests

July 21, 2017

Big events such as the general election, the Glastonbury festival and the One Love Manchester benefit concert, have made June a massive month for live viewing on BBC iPlayer. 21 per cent of the requests to BBC iPlayer in June were for live TV viewing, the highest level for any month since the Olympics in August last year.

One Love Manchester was the most popular programme of the month, with over 2 million requests for the concert. The initial hours of the BBC’s general election coverage saw the second highest level of requests in June, with 1.3 million requests.

June saw 256 million requests to BBC iPlayer in total, a 12 per cent increase on the same month in 2016. Outside of live viewing, Sean Bean drama Broken was the best performing show, with over 1.2 million requests. New drama Paula performed well with 992,000 requests, and the return of Poldark also proved popular, with over 934,000 requests.

The Glastonbury festival also drove a large proportion of live viewing, with more than 4.5 million requests for live streams on BBC iPlayer and the BBC’s Glastonbury website throughout the weekend. Acts including Foo Fighters, Radiohead, Liam Gallagher, Barry Gibb and Lorde proved to be big draws.

Dan McGolpin, Controller of Programming and Daytime, commented: “Whether you want to watch at a time that best suits you or you want to tune in to what’s happening right now, BBC iPlayer is a great place to find top quality content from the BBC. This June, large numbers of people chose BBC iPlayer to watch the general election results, One Love Manchester and Glastonbury in addition to drama series such as Jimmy McGovern’s Broken.”

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