BBC iPlayer reveals several streaming records broken under lockdown

The BBC has revealed its iPlayer’s stream and download statistics during the UK’s lockdown period, with predictably record-breaking results.

Sunday 10 May was the busiest day ever for the platform with 22.5 million streaming and download requests, part of the overall astonishing 927 million requests for content from the British public since lockdown began on 23 March – 61% higher than the same period in 2019.

564 million of this figure was made in April, iPlayer’s busiest month on record.

You might think that it’s obvious that we’re all sitting at home watching the telly, but the official statistics still make for interesting reading. Hit shows Normal People and Killing Eve helped the iPlayer to its most successful week from 27 April – 3 May with 146 million requests for programming overall.

Normal People has had 28 million requests to date, making it one of BBC Three’s most successful launches of recent times.

The BBC even broke the billion mark, with 1.4 billion requests made to the service from January to March, up 34% from 2019. The organisation noted that while requests initially were high for news and children’s programming, requests for drama and comedy have “grown strongly” as lockdown as continued, with Mrs Brown’s Boys, Gavin and Stacey and This Country performing best in the comedy section.

The most popular single episode of the lockdown period streamed or downloaded was episode 1 of series 3 of Killing Eve with 5.17 million requests, substantially ahead of second place’s 3.69 million of episode 2 of the same series.

Controller of BBC iPlayer Dan McGolpin said: “This has been a unique period in our history and I’m pleased that BBC iPlayer has been able to make such a positive contribution to what so many people are watching.”