iPlayer gets live sports boost in July

Programme requests on the BBC’s catch-up service, the iPlayer, were up 38% year-on-year in July to 242 million with sports content boosting live viewing. 

Sport resulted in the proportion of live requests to TV and radio going up month-over-month to 15% and 85% respectively with the Wimbledon men’s tennis final alone generating almost 800,000 requests via iPlayer – in addition to views on the BBC Sport site.

The Ashes cricket helped the BBC hit a record 77 million radio requests in July, with requests from mobiles also the highest they have ever been.

“On TV, the new series of Top Gear proved extremely popular, with episodes one to four each receiving over 2 million requests. Other top performing programmes included The Apprentice, Luther and The White Queen,” the BBC said.

July saw an average 7.2 million daily programme requests with weekly requests remaining steady at 51 million requests during the month. Mobile and tablet requests remained stable month-on-month, comprising 31% of total requests.