More than two years after launching ITVX, the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster has finally reported a significant growth in streaming numbers.
- One billion streams achieved within three months for the first time.
- Early streaming of soaps, drama and live sport contribute to rise.
Premiering shows on ITVX has helped ITV report its best ever streaming figures since the service launched in December 2022.
Despite a large promotional push through the past few years, underlying streaming figures have been static, with ITVX struggling to achieve more than one billion stream requests every four months.
Online, ITV’s flagship soaps Coronation Street and Emmerdale have had a strong start to the year, with 124 million streams on ITVX. Soap viewing is up +35% on Q1 2024, as ITV follows the BBC in making soaps available to stream every morning, hours before they’re broadcast on traditional TV services.
Entertainment is another big contributor, achieving 133 million streams in Q1, up 22 per cent on last year with popular Saturday night shows Britain’s Got Talent, The Masked Singer and The 1% Club all seeing double digit growth on ITVX this year.
It has been a strong quarter for drama with over 300 million streams thanks to ITVX’s ‘New Drama Sundays’. Once again, this is down to premiering new shows before they’re broadcast on ITV1 or screening acquired shows that don’t get an outing on traditional outlets.
Unforgotten is the biggest returning drama on any channel or streaming platform this year, and new dramas Playing Nice and Protection are currently ITVX’s second and third biggest dramas ever, behind only Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Over 50% of the audience watched Playing Nice on ITVX, with 58 per cent choosing the platform for the final two episodes.
Six Nations Rugby and FA Cup coverage also boosted ITVX’s streaming figures in the first quarter of 2025.
But ITVX’s biggest title of the year so far is Love Island All Stars with over 100 million streams.
Kevin Lygo, ITV’s Managing Director of Media and Entertainment commented:
“We have totally transformed our streaming offer with ITVX over the past couple of years, and all our teams internally, alongside the best producers in the business, have helped deliver these brilliant numbers, by producing, promoting and delivering this fantastic content to audiences to stream.”
His comments follow strong criticism of ITV’s streaming strategy as reported by The Sunday Times last year, citing internal ITV sources.
Analysis
To say the streaming market is saturated is quite the understatement. ITV was late to the game in terms of a reliable streaming product that contained more than just catch-up TV. ITVX launched after the big pandemic streaming peak and struggled to gain much traction in 2023 and 2024. While ITV highlighted streaming growth compared to ITVX’s predecessor ITV Hub and increased streaming of individual shows, the number of overall streams didn’t grow much. For example, it took four months for ITVX to achieve it first billion streams (8th December 2022-9th April 2023). Subsequent updates from ITV ran like clockwork, with the service recording further billion stream milestones roughly every four months.
So what did ITV do to encourage figures to go up? Make more of its shows available earlier on ITVX. It’s not a new trick – you may recall broadcasters did similar 20 years ago when they rolled out the first generation of digital linear offshoot channels. E4 began to premier Hollyoaks, while sport gained prominence on ITV4. At the time, the BBC also pushed selected content to BBC Three and BBC Four. Arguably, that watered down the prominence of the main UK channels, and the same is likely to be true now as broadcasters rush to ditch traditional TV services.
By: Marc Thornham | Image: ITV