TGI: The growth of online TV

In our latest research focus article, TGI’s James McCombe explains why England’s World Cup defeat wasn’t all bad…

As the dust settles on yet another English footballing disaster, the home fans can take comfort from the fact that Joachim Loew and his young, gifted German team are not the only winners.

Over the past few weeks the BBC sport website and ITV Live have generated huge interest as workers up and down the country stream live coverage to their desktop. Pre-tournament data from TGI show that 3.1 million British people watch online TV on a regular basis, up from 2.1 million in 2009.

England vs Germany

Online TV is one area in which, for the moment at least, England beats Germany hands down. Britons are three times as likely as their German counterparts to watch online TV regularly and twice as likely to watch on an occasional basis. The audience is also attractive to advertisers. Approaching 40% of regular viewers are aged 15-24 and they are 70% more likely to have a total family income of £75,000 or more. They are 40% more likely to ‘be tempted to buy’ products they’ve seen advertised.

Star Players

The FIFA World Cup has also given a boost to the BBC and ITV’s non-live programme streaming services, with key matches and highlights regularly featuring among the most-watched iPlayer and ITV Player content. TGI shows that at least 30% of British adults access TVOD with 13% – 6.7 million people – watching for at least an hour a week. The majority (56%) of TVOD viewers access content through a TV set and 40% use a PC. Viewers tend to be young – a quarter are aged 15-24 – and upscale, with a higher than average family income. They are 30% more likely to have spent heavily on outerwear (coats, trousers, etc) and 25% more likely to have taken a holiday abroad in the past year.

Keeping the ball

Both the BBC and ITV have invested in social TV with new iPlayer functionality and ITV Live allowing users to keep in touch while streaming content. The ongoing success of these initiatives looks assured as multi-tasking becomes the norm. Over 40% of internet users already listen to or watch conventional TV while surfing the net, and 28% send text messages to friends or family while online. In the months ahead even the most die-hard England fans may find that some good came out of the first social-media World Cup.