The FIFA World Cup, Doctor Who, the Commonwealth Games and Peaky Blinders helped push the BBC’s Player to its best-ever year in 2022, breaking 7 billion streams for the first time.
The BVoD saw its best-ever month in December 2022 with 700 million streams, and its best-ever quarter at the end of the year, with 2 billion.
The return of Peaky Blinders was the top episode of the year, streamed 6.9 million times across the year, with over 55 million streams for the boxset. Other top boxsets of the year include Doctor Who (56m streams), Waterloo Road (2006-2015) (46m streams), and Death in Paradise (46m streams)
Sporting events were also among the most-watched programmes of the year, including Commonwealth Games (53m streams) and Wimbledon (43m streams), said the BBC.
Director of BBC iPlayer Dan McGolpin said: “2022 saw huge growth for BBC iPlayer, 7 billion streams is double where we were a few years ago. Alongside the big events like the World Cup and the outstanding coverage of the state funeral for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, people arrived in their millions to watch an array of big drama boxsets including the final series of Peaky Blinders and a large number of brand new series such as The Tourist, The Responder and SAS Rogue Heroes. Over the last year we’ve added more choice than ever before in every genre, with plenty more in store for 2023.”