Sport helped the BBC iPlayer achieve its best-ever figures in July.
The combination of the second half of the World Cup and the Wimbledon tennis championships pushed demand up by 19 per cent year on year.
Live viewing accounted for 22 per cent of the 281 million requests made in the month, though the proportion was even greater in June.
26 per cent of all requests on BBC iPlayer were for live content in June – the highest share of live viewing since the Rio Olympics 2016.
July’s most popular episodes on BBC iPlayer were from the World Cup, with England’s quarter-final game against Sweden taking the top spot with 3.1 million requests. France’s semi-final against Belgium was second with over 2 million requests, and Belgium’s quarter-final against Brazil took third with 1.8 million.
Dan McGolpin, controller of programming & daytime BBC Content, said: “It’s been an incredible summer of sport on the BBC and that together with our summer boxsets selection has helped BBC iPlayer to grow strongly on last year. England’s quarter-final against Sweden was the BBC’s highest online-viewed live programme ever.”
Outside of the football, Our Girl continued to prove popular with 1.5 million requests for the fifth episode.
