2023 was the biggest year ever for RTÉ Player, with the free live and on-demand streaming service pushing on to deliver a record 100 million streams*, 35 million streaming hours and reaching 1.8 million unique users per month by the end of 2023.
The RTÉ Player Top 10 reveals that Irish audiences love to stream a wide range of content from their daily consumption of soaps including EastEnders, Home & Away and Fair City, to critically acclaimed drama including KIN, Happy Valley and Love/Hate, and never miss a moment of live action sport from the Rugby World Cup to The All-Ireland Senior GAA Championship and the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Viewers accessed RTÉ Player to binge home-grown documentaries including Gaelic in the Joy, Dr Cassidy’s Casebook and The Case I Can’t Forget were a hit with streamers, along with hit comedy series The Young Offenders, SisterS and Colin from Accounts.
Viewers turned to RTÉ Player for entertainment throughout the year to watch The Late Late Show, The Tommy Tiernan Show and First Dates Ireland. Oscar-nominated short film, An Irish Goodbye was the most streamed film of the year on RTÉ Player. July 26th was the biggest day of the year on RTÉ Player with over 250,000 hours of content streamed on the day that Katie McCabe led the Republic of Ireland in a crucial clash against Canada during the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
RTÉ Player offers a large selection of content for kids. Peppa Pig and Bluey were hits in 2023, along with Irish language programme Peppa Muc and award-winning Dizzy Deliveries – the first programme to teach children Irish lámh signs.
RTÉ Player Originals continued to launch new faces and formats online with home renovation series Relove My Space presented by Fionnuala Jones and Paul Kinsella taking the top spot in this category, and Anna Clifford’s new series Ireland’s Perfect Pubs which launched in October.
Soaps on RTÉ Player including Fair City, EastEnders, Home and Away and Neighbours had more than 20 million streams in 2023. The most-watched episode of Fair City was from April 16th, when Halley discovered that Rafferty’s meetings at McCoy’s were not what they seemed. The most watched episode of EastEnders was from January 5th, with the fallout from the Slater’s New Year’s Eve party coming to a dramatic conclusion.
Speaking about the success of RTÉ Player over the past 12 months, Head of RTÉ Player Aoife Byrne said:
“2023 was the biggest year ever for RTÉ Player – on target to reach 100 million streams by year end is double where we were a few years ago. Alongside the big live events like the Women’s World Cup, The Sunday Game Live, The Rugby World Cup and The Late Late Toy Show, audiences binged an array of big drama boxsets including KIN, Happy Valley, Smother and One Tree Hill and TV series such as The Room to Improve, Home of the Year and the ever-popular Soaps.
"Over the last year we’ve added more choice than ever before in every genre on RTÉ Player, and continued our investment to ensure audiences have a great streaming experience, live and on-demand. We have also extended availability of our RTÉ Player app across more TV platforms than ever before. There’s plenty more in store for 2024.”
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Top 10 programmes on RTÉ Player in 2023
1 EastEnders
2 Home and Away
3 Fair City
4 KIN
5 The Saturday/Sunday Game
6 Rugby World Cup 2023
7 Happy Valley
8 Love/Hate
9 The Late Late Show
10 FIFA Women’s World Cup
Top 10 drama series on RTÉ Player in 2023
1 KIN
2 Happy Valley
3 Love/Hate
4 Unforgotten
5 Normal People
6 One Tree Hill
7 Frasier
8 Clean Sweep
9 Gossip Girl
10 Smother
Top 10 individual sport events on RTÉ Player in 2023
1 FIFA Women’s World Cup Live: Republic of Ireland v Australia (20th July 2023)
2 Rugby World Cup 2023: South Africa v Ireland (23rd September 2023)
3 FIFA Women’s World Cup Live: Canada v Ireland (26th July 2023)
4 The Sunday Game Live: Kilkenny v Limerick, All-Ireland Hurling Final (23rd July 2023)
5 The Sunday Game Live: Dublin v Kerry, All-Ireland Football Final 2023 (30th July 2023)
6 Guinness Six Nations: Ireland v France (11 February 2023)
7 European Qualifiers: Republic of Ireland v France, UEFA Euro 2024 (27th March 2023)
8 Guinness Six Nations: Scotland v Ireland (12th March 2023)
9 Rugby World Cup 2023: Ireland v Tonga (16th September 2023)
10 Rugby World Cup 2023: France v New Zealand (8th September 2023)
Top 10 documentaries on RTÉ Player in 2023
1 Gaelic in the Joy
2 Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland
3 Dr Cassidy’s Casebook
4 The Case I Can’t Forget
5 Davy’s Toughest Team
6 Ireland’s Wild Islands
7 The Murdochs: Empire of Influence
8 Quinn Country
9 Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle
10 Brian and Arthur: A Very Modern Family
Top 10 comedy programmes on RTÉ Player in 2023
1 The Young Offenders
2 Father Ted
3 Sisters
4 The Big Bang Theory
5 Colin from Accounts
6 Hardy Bucks
7 Killinaskully
8 Women on the Verge
9 The 2 Johnnies Do America
10 PEN15
Top 10 kids programmes on RTÉ Player in 2023
1 Peppa Pig
2 Bluey
3 News2Day
4 Bing Bunny
5 Fireman Sam
6 Peppa Muc
7 Dizzy Deliveries
8 Shaun the Sheep
9 Hey Duggee
10 Fia’s Fairies
*Based on average weekly usage and 2022 performance RTÉ Player streams expected to hit 100 million by 31 December 2023.
Data source: Piano Analytics. Top 10 based on total streams, genre top 10’s are based on total streams within that genre.