As speculation over the future of ITV mounts, the broadcaster says its streaming service has outperformed and reached a 3 billion stream milestone early.
- Soap fans wanting early access to their favourites boost ITVX streaming numbers.
- Playing Nice becomes ITVX’s top drama of the year.
- ITV claims its streaming service outperforms rivals.
ITVX has surpassed 3 billion streams for the year to date, just over three weeks earlier than in 2024. Online-first soaps, drama and reality shows drove viewers to the service, which ITV says outperformed its main commercial rivals.
Drama remains the biggest genre on ITVX with 859 million streams (+16%). The genre surpassed last year’s record total in just ten months. ITV has delivered 5 of the top 10 dramas of the year across the market, thanks in part to the successful ‘Drama Drop Sundays’ strategy, offering audiences a new drama boxset every Sunday on the service. Playing Nice was the top performing drama of the year so far.
How Coronation Street and Emmerdale boosted ITVX
The main reason why ITVX hit the three billion stream milestone three weeks earlier than last year is the decision to make episodes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale available in the morning. Users can watch from 7am, over 12 hours before the soaps are shown on ITV1.
Soaps achieved over 400 million streams so far this year. They saw the biggest year-on-year increase of all the genres at +30%. ITVX is expected to get a further boost early in 2026, when ITV screens a crossover episode.
Reality delivers younger viewers
Reality delivered over half a billion streams this year so far. Love Island, celebrating 10 years on screen, generated over 200 million streams, with another 100 million for Love Island All Stars, successfully driving younger viewers to ITVX.
Big Brother and The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE) each saw over 50 million streams, while the new show The Princess Diaries became the most watched reality series on the platform after Love Island with 39% of the audience under 35, on ITVX.
Six Nations has best ever streaming year
Live sport continues to attract significant streaming audiences for specific events. The Women’s Euros Semi-Final was ITVX’s biggest sport audience this year, with over 4 million live streams for that single match. The Six Nations also had its best ever year on ITVX with 16 million streams for the 10 matches shown by ITV, up by nearly a quarter (+24%) on last year.
ITV boasts…
According to ITV, its streaming service has been the number one commercial broadcaster video on demand (BVoD) service in the UK every month of the last two years, i.e. it’s ahead of rival such as Channel 4 streaming and 5’s streaming app, just like on linear TV.
ITV also boosts that its ad-tier outperforms the ad-tiers of every other broadcaster and global streamer (such as Netflix) – according to figures from Barb. This may of course be down in part to the fact ITVX’s ad-tier is free, unlike other services where you have to pay to watch ads.
Kevin Lygo, ITV’s Managing Director of Media and Entertainment, commented:
“Hitting 3 billion streams this early in the year is a terrific achievement and proves that ITVX is really delivering for viewers. This milestone – hit three weeks ahead of last year, when we had the Men’s Euros, and before the start of I’m a Celeb… which is always a huge driver – highlights the sheer volume and quality of content we offer for free. From record-breaking drama and reality series that bring in younger audiences, to a massive uplift in Soaps, ITVX is truly established as the must-watch destination for the biggest and best British TV.”
ITVX is part of the broadcasting division of ITV that’s up for sale, with Sky’s owner Comcast continuing talks with the broadcaster. Any deal would separate ITVX from many of the top shows (made by ITV Studios) that have contributed to its success this year.
ITVX launched in December 2022. Its streaming figures were stuck at about 1 billion streams every four months (3 billion streams over 12 months) during the first year of operation. Figures began to perk up during 2024, helped by the runaway success of Mr Bates versus The Post Office in the first quarter of the year. ITVX reached 3 billion streams by early December.
In this context, reaching 3 billion streams by the second week of November is a notable improvement.
During 2025, ITV began to showcase more content on YouTube. For example, viewers can now watch full episodes of ITV News and regional news programmes on YouTube. This hasn’t caused an obvious drop in ITVX users, particularly as news isn’t a major driver to the the platform.
By: Marc Thornham | Image: ITV