The BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury 2023 has broken previous digital audience records for viewing and listening.
Content from the music festival has so been streamed a record 47.5 million times, an increase of 49% on 2021. Meanwhile on BBC Sounds, listeners played Glastonbury content 2.8 million times, up 26% on the previous year.
On BBC iPlayer, the Glastonbury live channel proved the most popular – with Sunday, when Sir Elton John headlined the Pyramid Stage, topping the charts after it was streamed 4.3 million times. Saturday’s live channel came second, with 3.8 million streams, Friday’s live channel third with 3.2 million streams – and live coverage from the Pyramid and The Other Stage followed with 2.1 million and 1.9 million streams respectively.
Lorna Clarke, Director of Music said: “This year audiences got to enjoy an unbeatable range of performances from this iconic festival wherever and whenever they wanted to. It’s fantastic that record numbers streamed our content – a whopping 50.3m times on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds – as people got to witness the range and breadth of what took place at Worthy Farm over the weekend.”
The live streaming included a new ‘Glasto-Cam’ and signing in BSL for artists appearing on the Pyramid Stage.
The digital figures were mirrored by linear audiences with Elton John’s headline set on Sunday night on BBC One receiving the biggest-ever overnight audience for a Glastonbury set with a 5-minute peak overnight audience of 7.6 million and average of 7.3 million / 48.9% share.
