GfK Claims Out Of Home Viewing Boosted Sky Sports
Sky Sports 1’s exclusive coverage of England’s recent Euro 2004 qualifying match against Turkey attracted 9.2 million adult viewers, according to the latest wave of research from the contentious GfK Broadcast Media Survey.
The survey used a special wristwatch device to measure out-of-home viewing for the channel’s coverage of the game, which attracted an average of 5.7 million adults between 6pm and 8pm on 11 October.
GfK claims that this represents a 46% increase on the in-home figure of 3.9 million recorded by official television ratings body, BARB. It is also more viewers than Sky Sports 1 reached all that week and is 2 million more adults than Sky has subscribers.
The research also shows that ITV1’s repeat of the match between 9.25pm and 11.25pm that evening indicated much lower levels of out-of-home viewing, with only 4.8 million adults choosing to go out to watch the match, compared to the 4.5 million that BARB said stayed in.
Commenting on the research, Nick North, director of GfK Media GB, said: “For the first time we are able to measure out-of-home television viewing by a highly credible electronic method. The high audience for the England – Turkey game is a clear indicator to advertisers of the extraordinary popularity of watching live televised football outside the home.”
The GfK survey results show both Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 increased their weekly reach in the 13-week period from 14 July to 12 October. The former posted a 4% increase to 10 million, while the was up by 1% 8.6 million as the football season got into full swing.
Sport-based radio stations also saw their audiences increase under the GfK survey. BBC Five Live improved by a fraction of a percent to 8.8 million weekly listeners and talkSPORT saw its weekly reach rise by 5% to 6.6 million. Radio 4 maintained its position as UK’s most popular radio station with 17.2 million weekly listeners, just ahead of Radio 2 with 15.8 million.
Radio 4 was also most popular radio station in the capital with 4 million listeners a week, followed by Radio 2 with 2.8 million and Capital 95.8 FM with 2.6 million.
GfK: 0870 603 8339 www.gfk.com
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