Italy: Linear viewing drops as streaming grows
October 26, 2023
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
In the first half of 2023, the average daily number of TV viewers in Italy decreased by 2.3 per cent to 8.56 million, while average prime TV viewers fell by 3.2 per cent to 20.01 million.
The Communications Observatory of the Communications Authority (AgCom) attributes this drop to the increasing competition from streaming video providers.
Rai was the most popular broadcaster, with an average daily audience of 3.27 million viewers (38.2 per cent share). Mediaset was second with 3.21 million viewers (37.5 per cent share), followed by Discovery (680,000 viewers), Comcast/Sky (620,000 viewers), and La7 (320,000 viewers).
Compared to the same period in 2022, Rai lost more viewers (160,000) than Mediaset (-100,000 viewers). La7 lost 80,000 viewers per day, while Discovery and Comcast/Sky saw no significant changes.
The trend is similar in prime time. Rai had an average daily prime-time audience of 7.81 million viewers (39.0 per cent share), compared to 7.53 million viewers (37.6 per cent share) for Mediaset.
Rai lost 520,000 viewers in one year, while Mediaset lost 280,000 viewers. La7’s prime-time audience fell by 120,000 viewers to 1.01 million (5.0 per cent share). Comcast/Sky’s viewership increased by 7.3 per cent to 1.50 million viewers, while Discovery’s viewership increased by 5.4 per cent to 1.40 million viewers.
Pay-TV VoD platforms registered 14.1 million unique users in June 2023, an annual increase of 475,000, with the average viewing time clocking in at 2h47m.
Netflix led with 9.0 million unique users, followed by Amazon Prime Video with 6.5 million, Disney+ (3.4 million), DAZN (2.1 million), and Now/Sky (1.1 million).
There were also 36.4 million unique users who logged on to free VOD platforms, a growth of 4 million in June 2022, spending an average of 40 minutes viewing content.
Mediaset led the way with 22.3 million unique users, ahead of Sky (16.7 million), and Rai (11.4 million).
Fixed telecom accesses were down 0.8 per cent to 19.9 million lines, with FTTC technology accounting for 50.7 per cent and FTTH for 20 per cent of the overall customer base. TIM led with a 40.9 per cent market share, ahead of Vodafone (16.2 per cent), Wind Tre (14.2 per cent), and Fastweb (13.9 per cent).