Millions flocked to ITVX to watch series like Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Love Island All Stars, and Trigger Point at the start of the year — breaking an all-time record for ITV. A dizzying 315 million streams were watched on ITVX throughout January, making it the biggest-ever month for streaming on any ITV platform.
That record viewing figure tops all previous months on ITVX or ITV Hub, an earlier Netflix competitor launched by ITV before it was superseded by ITVX in late 2022. ITV accomplished its all-time record despite pulling two streaming apps from Prime Video Channels across Amazon platforms.
The record-breaking viewing figures on ITVX were driven by the FA Cup Quarter Final between Manchester United and Liverpool (6.1m), Love Island All Stars (43m), Mr Bates vs the Post Office (22m), After The Flood (20m), and Trigger Point (9m).
ITVX's record-breaking month comes off the back of a tough year for the streamer. ITVX shed 100,000 paid subscribers last year. According to the commercial broadcaster, it had 1.3 million subscribers as of December 31, 2023. Despite this drop, ITV says it’s “on track” to double the number of paid subscribers within the next two years to reach its target of 2.5 million ITVX Premium subscribers by 2026.
ITVX Premium costs £5.99 per month to watch without adverts, making it £1 more expensive than the most affordable subscriptions from Disney+ and Netflix, although these plans do have ad breaks.
Paid-for subscribers will gain access to exclusive shows from BritBox, which was subsumed into the streamer last year. It comes as the BBC offered an early glimpse at its plans to overhaul the experience on its own streaming service, BBC iPlayer, over the next 12 months to better compete with the likes of Netflix, Prime Video, and ITX.
ITVX Premium costs £5.99 per month. The paid subscription removes ad breaks from on-demand content and unlocks 7,000 hours of exclusive shows commissioned for ITVX and BritBox
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ITV pulled the plug on two separate services hosted on Amazon's Prime Video platform — ITV Catchup and BritBox — at the beginning of the year in a dramatic shake-up of its streaming offering.
Both ITV-owned channels were available as standalone subscriptions for Prime Video users, with the monthly fees charged directly to the payment details stored on your Amazon account.
Channels offer a way to watch content from other providers within the Prime Video app, so you don’t need to continuously bounce between multiple apps to find the boxset, documentary, or movie that you’re looking to watch. Since everything is managed by your Amazon account, there’s also no need to create a standalone login for every streamer either.
But it wasn’t just convenience that made ITV Catchup such a good option for Prime Video viewers, it was also a more affordable way to ditch adverts from your favourite ITV shows. Ad-free viewing cost £3.99 a month via Prime Video channels, compared to £5.99 per month for ITVX Premium.
Some older set-top boxes and Android Smart TVs are incompatible with the standalone ITVX app, which only launched in December 2022. Many of these devices still support Prime Video, so channels proved to be a useful workaround to access content from ITV and BritBox.
With the closure of ITV Catchup and BritBox, which has now been subsumed by ITVX, these loopholes have been sealed shut, leaving ITVX as the only way to binge-watch boxsets and films ahead of their broadcast on television or without ad breaks.
Limiting the options available to stream ITV shows, coupled with a slew of headline-grabbing shows like Mr Bates vs The Post Office, After the Flood,and Love Island, has proven to be a winning formula for ITV, based on its record-breaking figures.
Speaking about the record January for ITVX, Rufus Radcliffe, ITV Managing Director of Streaming said: “ITVX has hit the ground running in 2024. It’s clear that our breadth of quality programming across all genres has brought viewers in their multiple millions and our Drama programming, with the enormous success of Mr Bates as well as After the Flood and the return of Trigger Point, has been extremely successful.”
To continue to grow ITVX, the broadcaster has announced plans to bring its streamer to more devices in the coming year, including PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles for the first time. ITVX is already on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, but not Sony or Nintendo-built competitors.
ITVX is widely tipped to launch on Freeview successor Freely in the coming months. This new service will offer access to live television over a broadband connection, with no need for an aerial.
To benefit advertisers, ITV has confirmed plans to introduce subtitles for adverts. It will also debut Pause Ads, which will show an extra advert on-screen whenever viewers hit the pause button.
ITVX replaced ITV Hub at the end of 2022. While it’s widely seen as an improvement, it still generates a range of complaints on social media for glitches and crashes. ITV has confirmed that it will invest in improving the streaming service in the coming months.
ITVX boasts 25,000 hours of shows, documentaries, and movies. Some of that content is reserved for paid ITVX Premium subscribers — roughly 7,000 hours, including boxsets from US broadcasters. It has 300 films, making it one of the largest free film libraries available in the UK.
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ITV commands a 32.6% share of commercial viewing in the UK. Research from Kantar shows that 19.8m British households now have at least one paid video streaming service in their household.
