Insight

With the Euro 2020 tournament attracting large amount of viewing on TV sets, we can also use Barb’s multiple-screen viewing techniques to measure the impact of tournament-viewing on broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) services. This includes viewing via these services on non-TV devices, as Barb measures both live and on-demand viewing on BVOD services across tablets, PCs/laptops and smartphones.

The start of Euro 2020 has already led to changes in how BVOD services are being used compared to benchmark patterns of activity. For the 4-week period May 10^th to June 6^th 2020, prior to the tournament, live streaming of BBC iPlayer accounted for 24% of total iPlayer viewing on non-TV devices. In the first full week of the tournament, June 14^th-20^th, with nine games available live on iPlayer, live streaming accounted for 46% of the iPlayer viewing on non-TV devices.

It is a similar story for ITV Hub, which also offers live simulcast viewing of their tournament coverage. In the benchmark 4-week period, 47% of viewing to ITV Hub on non-TV devices was via live streaming – in the tournament week, this jumped to 83%. Using ITV Hub as an example, we can also see that overall volumes of viewing have increased. In the 4-week period to June 6^th, an aggregate total of 250 million minutes of ITV Hub live streaming were watched on non-TV devices. In the week of June 14^th-20^th alone, the live figure was 362 million minutes.

These figures indicate that the ability to watch live sport on a device is much welcomed by viewers.  By looking at the breakdown per match, we can also deliver further insights into this viewing.

From the opening game on June 11^th until the start of the final round of group games on June 20^th, viewing audiences on non-TV devices have averaged almost 129,000 viewers per game, with quite wide variation per match. The leading game in this period was France v Germany, which delivered over 315,000 viewers watching the game on a PC/laptop, tablet or smartphone. Other leading fixtures by audience size include Portugal v Germany and Scotland v Czech Republic, at between 195k and 200k each.

There are also some interesting insights to be found when we look at which devices are viewing the different matches. Across all matches, viewing on a smartphone delivers around 35% of the device total on average, but of the six matches played on the opening Saturday-Sunday of the tournament, three of them had a smartphone viewing percentage between 45%-49% of the total. Two factors have likely played into this.  First, excellent weather across the country that weekend meant that more people were spending time outside away from the TV set, but didn’t want to miss the big game. A smartphone is certainly the most portable way of watching live coverage.

Alongside this, two of these three games featured England and Wales – further incentive for viewers to find a way not to miss out. Similarly, Scotland’s opening game versus Czech Republic was also heavily watched on smartphones, at 46% of the 195k total audience. The timeslot of this game will also have been a factor, with a 2pm kick-off on a weekday meaning that a greater proportion of the potential audience may have been away from their home TV set.

The chart above shows one final piece of food for thought – the percentage of viewing that devices add to the TV set audience. Although the marquee games can be most-popular in terms of volumes of device viewing, they don’t always add a huge percentage proportion of extra viewing, as the size of the TV audience is also large. Across all these matches, the average device-uplift per match was +3.8%, while for England v Croatia the device viewing added only +1.6% on top of the TV set audience.

But some matches do stand out. With the third set of group games having the same kick-off times, live coverage of Switzerland v Turkey was on ITV4, which meant that the TV audience was substantially lower than the simultaneous match on ITV, especially as this featured Wales (v Italy). Although device-viewing for Switzerland v Turkey was also low, it made up a much higher proportion of the overall total, with total four-screen viewing +17% higher than the figure for TV sets only. The other outlier is Ukraine v North Macedonia, where device viewing drove the total +8% higher than the TV set figure. As this was another weekday early-afternoon kick-off, this may well have been a factor, or perhaps for this fixture football viewers finally lost control of the TV remote over a week into the tournament, and had to migrate to other devices.

For viewers that aren’t prioritising the football, another show that delivers large amounts of device viewing also returned recently. Launching on June 28^th, early numbers for ITV2’s Love Island indicate that this series could provide another boost for ITV Hub to go with the football. Across Monday 28^th and Tuesday 29^th, ITV Hub was viewed for over 230 million minutes on PC/Laptops, tablets and smartphones. Although this also includes football coverage from these days, this total is 73% higher than the average viewing level for the previous two Monday-Tuesday periods, which also featured football.

So this shows us that increased device viewing is driven by a desire to view all kinds of matches – not just the sporting ones.