RTÉ today has announced that its video-on-demand RTÉ Player app has achieved over 2 million downloads across iOS and Android mobile and tablet devices.
Some 78% of these downloads are within Ireland, while 22% are from international users. The app currently averages 11,200 downloads each week with 262,000 unique browsers in the past 7 days. Today’s announcement coincides with the 7th anniversary of RTÉ Player, which first began in 2009 as a desktop offering.
RTÉ Player across all platforms (desktop, mobile, tablet, cable TV providers, Samsung Connected TVs and Xbox), is the number one broadcaster video on demand (VOD) service in Ireland, and currently serves an average of 4.4 million streams per month. This is up from an average of 3.35 million streams per month in 2015. The service had 489,000 unique browsers in the last 7 days.
RTÉ Player’s audience growth and number of streaming requests continues to be driven by big RTÉ TV programmes and the expansion of RTÉ Player’s exclusive content offering. According to RTÉ, the service is shifting from being a pure catch-up service, to being an online TV destination for just aired TV as well as short-form online exclusives and extra content. February saw the strongest volume of streams for online exclusive content with RTÉ Player serving 268,000 streams, up 92% on February 2015.
Aoife Byrne, Director of Content & Products, RTÉ, says: “RTÉ Player is an increasingly important part of the way viewers enjoy RTÉ’s content and this is being reflected in the increased number of streams we are serving each month. With 2 million app downloads, mobile viewing now represents a huge proportion of our streaming on RTÉ Player and we are now creating and curating even more short-form content, particularly targeted around the needs and habits of this mobile audience. Whether audiences want to watch snackable 3-minute Food Bites on their phone, or, get immersed in our curated on demand documentary hub on their laptop, we want to ensure that our content offering is optimised for whatever screen audiences are watching on.”
