ITVX hits 1bn streams
April 17, 2023
By Nik Roseveare
On April 9th, ITVX officially hit the one billion streams mark. The milestone came just over four months after the service’s launch on December 8th 2022.
2022 was ITV’s previous most successful year for streaming, when it took nearly seven months to hit the one billion streams mark. This follows on from ITVX achieving its best ever month for streaming in March 2023, with 282 million streams, up by more than 100 million on last year.
Dramas including The Twelve, Without Sin and A Spy Among Friends have been the top performing ITVX premieres in the period, attracting harder to reach audiences to ITVX. Some 80 per cent of audiences who have watched ITVX premieres, including titles like Nolly (pictured) and Litvinenko, have gone on to watch other content on ITVX.
Amongst the library of series and films available on ITVX, the most popular UK drama series from the archive is so far Footballers Wives, with One Tree Hill clocking up the highest volume of streams to date amongst the range of US boxsets on ITVX. The most popular film amongst the extensive film library in the period has been Love Actually, with The Chase channel as the most popular themed (FAST) channel, to date.
Love Island in 2023 has been a strong driver of streaming and is the most watched programme on ITVX this year based on streams, with the fifth season of Unforgotten being the most watched drama, with streams of the acclaimed cold case series up 49 per cent on season four.
Streams of sporting events including 6 Nations Rugby and the FA Cup have pulled in strong livestream audiences in 2023, with year on year uplifts on the new and improved service.
Forthcoming highlights on ITVX include The Real Crown: Inside the House of Windsor (streaming from April 20th) a behind-the-scenes story of The Royal Family; New drama Tom Jones will stream free on ITVX from May 4th. Based on Henry Fielding’s classic novel, following the title character’s complicated journey to find real love; May 11th will see the free streaming premiere of Crime on ITVX, the Irvine Welsh series starring Dougray Scott, Joanna Vanderham and Angela Griffin.; and two part documentary Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight streams from May 18th. Almost a decade on from his arrest, the documentary speak directly to Harris’ accusers, telling the story of how his assaults became gradually more serious throughout his television career in the 70s and 80s.