STV Player delivers record-breaking start to 2021

Immediate Release: Wednesday 3 February 2021

STV Player delivers record-breaking start to 2021 following a year of exceptional growth

·    Total streams up 115%, online viewing up 100% compared with last January

·    Drama boxset drops prove big success with viewers

·    STV Player-exclusive content and UK-wide launch also help to drive outstanding performance

STV Player, the free streaming service run by broadcaster STV, has kicked off 2021 with a record-breaking performance. 

The platform delivered 12.5 million streams in January, an increase of 115% on the same month last year. Online viewing was also up 100% year-on-year, with a total of 6 million hours spent consuming content on the STV Player throughout the month. The number of monthly active users on the service grew by 20% in January alone. 

STV's streaming service grew faster than any other broadcaster VOD platform in 2020 - up 68% - thanks in large part to the growing popularity of its Player-exclusive content, which now makes up around one third of all digital viewing.

The Player's addressable audience increased considerably after being added to Sky Q across the UK in December, following UK-wide launches on Freeview Play and Virgin Media earlier in the year. It is now pre-installed in over 17 million UK broadband-enabled homes - around 70% of the total.

The dropping of network drama box sets was also a key driver for the growth in traffic in January, with The Bay being streamed 1.7 million times, and the new series of Marcella attracting 700,000 streams in just six days after being added to the platform on 26 January. Comedy drama Finding Alice was streamed 1 million times, as was word-of-mouth hit The Bridge, an STV Player-exclusive series.

In addition to The Bridge, the platform offers an ever-increasing range of high-quality multi-genre titles, including gripping US dramas like Gracepoint and Detective McLean, Australian boxsets The Slap, Janet King and Devil's Dust, critically-acclaimed Irish series Striking Out, plus hundreds more unmissable entertainment and documentary series.

It's also home to a huge range of STV's local programming and classic archive content, such as Taggart, Rebus and Take the High Road, with the classic Scottish soap attracting over 1 million streams since its launch on the Player in April. In total there are now more than 3,000 hours of Player-only titles available on the service.

Richard Williams, Managing Director of Digital at STV, said: "We're only one month into 2021 but we've already delivered a record-breaking performance for the STV Player, which has exceeded all expectations. 

"We spent much of last year working to ensure that viewers across the UK could enjoy the fantastic free content available on our platform, and we're delighted to see so many of them are now doing exactly that. Our strategy of constantly refreshing the service with new Player-only titles from around the world will continue throughout 2021, with a range of exciting content deals in the pipeline."

ENDS

For more information, please contact:

Kirstin Stevenson on 07803 970106 or email [email protected].

NOTES

The STV Player app is available on all major platforms including web, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, Kindle tablets, Freeview Play, Apple TV, YouView, Samsung, Freesat, Fire TV, Virgin Media, Sky+, Sky Q and Sky Go, Roku, Now TV, and via Chromecast.

The STV Player is the exclusive home of the Channel 3 network schedule in Scotland and offers a wide variety of Player-only programming to viewers across the UK.

www.stv.tv