ITV on track for record streaming year
December 21, 2022
By Colin Mann
It is set to be a record year for streaming for UK commercial broadcaster ITV, as 2022 comes to a close with huge livestream audiences for I’m A Celebrity and the World Cup, as well as a strong launch for AVoD service ITVX.
ITV’s biggest week ever for streaming was November 22nd– November 28th, which attracted 106.4 million streams and covered the last week of I’m A Celebrity and 16 World Cup matches, including England v USA.
ITVX attracted 66.5 million streams in the first week after its launch (December 8th – 14th) – an increase of 138 per cent compared to the same period in 2021 when ITV Hub had 28 million streams. Viewers were attracted by the quarter and semi-finals of the World Cup, together with new exclusive content such as cold war drama A Spy Among Friends, which has performed well bringing new and light viewers to ITV.
The launch week included ITV’s biggest ever day for streaming, with 30 million streams on Saturday December 10th, driven by ITV’s coverage of England v France and Morocco v Portugal.
Around 2 million more registered users had signed up to the service since the roll out began in November 2022.
“ITVX has seen a 138 per cent increase in online viewing compared to the same period last year and it is great to see so many people coming into our brilliant new streaming home,” declared Rufus Radcliffe, Managing Director of Streaming, Interactive & Data. “The football has been a big part of that, but even if you take out exceptional programmes like I’m A Celebrity and the World Cup our underlying viewing during the week was up 56 per cent year on year.”
“Away from live streaming, we are delighted with the reception for our strong slate of commissioned launch titles. It is great to see so many viewers coming from the harder to reach audiences that we don’t typically attract to streaming, and that we are aiming to bring in for our exclusive content.”
“With over 15,000 hours of programming and films on ITVX, there really is something for everyone. Our new service is much more of a destination for discovery and will offer so much more content to engage users for longer, which is another key objective for us,” he concluded.
At least one new show will launch on ITVX per week going forward, which will be exclusive to streaming for many months before receiving a linear transmission on one of ITV’s channels.
Litvinenko launched on December 15th, while high-stakes family drama Riches will launch on December 22nd alongside landmark natural history documentary A Year on Planet Earth. Thriller Without Sin and new game show Loaded in Paradise will launch on December 28th.
The launch of ITVX rounds off a strong year for ITV in streaming – which saw its biggest ever year for streams of Love Island (273 million +28 per cent), its biggest year yet in streaming for I’m A Celebrity (57 million +156 per cent) and its highest ever total of drama streams across the year to date. (309 million a +30 per cent increase on 2021).