ITVX celebrates “runaway success” in first year
November 29, 2023
By Nik Roseveare
On December 8th, ITVX will mark its first anniversary. ITV has taken a look back at its inaugural year and all the new streaming platform has achieved, plus a look at what’s coming in 2024 and beyond.
ITV says ITVX was “undoubtedly this year’s biggest and most successful streaming launch in the UK” with over 2.7 billion streams since launch (a new record for ITV) and more than 40 million registered users.
Additional first year highlights include:
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Up year on year across all genres – drama, sport and film have more than doubled
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88 per cent of viewers who watch a premier go on to watch other content
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Streaming hours for men have increased by over 100 million this year
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1 billion streaming hours (another new record for ITV)
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Love Island has been streamed 340 million times, over 60 per cent of the audience is 16-34s
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The Rugby World Cup has been streamed 60 million times, up +80 per cent on the last tournament in 2019
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Big Brother: 36 episodes, 38 million streams
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216 programmes have been watched by a million or more viewers
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200 million streams for 8 out of the past 11 months. Prior to launch, this only happened 6 times in 6 years
The service is now available on more platforms than ever before and awareness of the product is peaking at 90 per cent of the UK population. The platform also has the world’s first British Sign Language FAST channel and in the summer it launched ITVX Kids, which is 100 per cent subtitled.
Breakout hits exclusively launched on ITVX in 2023 include The Twelve, a courtroom drama starring Sam Neill; the first two series of Irvine Welsh’s Crime; Love & Death starring Elizabeth Olsen in a true story of a 1980’s Texas housewife accused of murder; Vanishing Act, the story of Melissa Caddick’s disappearance after being confronted by authorities for her alleged multi-million dollar swindling; two-part documentary The Case Against Cosby; and comedy Changing Ends based on Alan Carr’s childhood in Northampton in the 1980s, which has just been recommissioned.
In addition, the latest series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! has been streamed over 20.5 million times in the first week alone, up by more than 3 million on the same period last year (+17 per cent).
Coming to the in 2024, ITV has announced:
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A pause ad format
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Short form advertising opportunities
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New distribution partners
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More sponsorship opportunities
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Regionalised news
ITV News is key to ITVX and has had over 18.5 million streams of short form news content since launch. ITVX has a constantly updated news service on the homepage. The service has been expanded with a ‘live news window’, which comes up when there’s a significant event to report, such as the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament earlier this November.
In December, a weekly programme with Tom Bradby centred around Prime Minister’s Questions will launch and from January onwards there will be an occasional ‘pop-up news channel’ on ITVX when there’s a major, breaking story. On top of that, this week ITVX is launching 12 regional news services. They’ll carry all regional news programmes, feature short form VoD of some of the most popular content from across all nations and regions, and additionally some exclusive regional reports made exclusively for the platform.
Upcoming content exclusive to ITVX includes The Winter King in late December, which is set in the fifth century, long before Britain was united, in a brutal land of warring factions and tribes. Building on the successful Big Brother live stream, as part of its live offering in 2024 ITVX is the new home of The Oscars ceremony. Plus there’s new Liverpudlian comedy G’Wed, an uplifting portrayal of teenagers today and how they view the world, and the second series of the critically acclaimed comedy-drama The Dry. Through an exclusive new deal with Disney+, ITVX will also have the first UK free-to-air run of comedy series Extraordinary and Hollywood drama Under the Banner of Heaven. And in film, ITVX will have new movies dropping every month including all of the Jurassic Park/World franchise.
Rufus Radcliffe, MD of Streaming, commented: “As we approach the first year milestone of ITVX, it’s important to reflect on the runaway success of the service – and we’re just getting started. 2024 will see us focus on further increased distribution, even more and improved commercial opportunities, an abundance of regional news offerings and of course even more exclusive, fresh and exciting content for free.”