The five-day event was watched by a record number of people on the BBC’s digital platforms – as streams on iPlayer increased by 116% compared to last Festival’s coverage
The BBC has announced that its coverage of this year’s Glastonbury Festival across its digital platforms has received record-breaking viewing figures.
A tweet put out by the BBC Press Office (28 June), boasts that “Glastonbury 2022 was a record-breaker with content streamed a record 34.1 million times on BBC iPlayer and played 2.3 million times on BBCSounds”, of which on iPlayer, a vast 23 million streams were live – the highest on record for a BBC programme brand.
Back in 2020, despite the sad cancellation of the Festival due to the worldwide pandemic, the BBC’s virtual festival coverage – titled ‘The Glastonbury Experience’ – still saw great success, as it surpassed 10 million streams of content on the BBC iPlayer, with thousands more having watched past sets broadcast on TV.
Speaking of this year’s Glastonbury coverage, Lorna Clarke, BBC Director of Music, said: “The BBC provided the ultimate armchair experience of the world’s best-loved festival this weekend with a dedicated Glastonbury channel on BBC iPlayer, 6 Music’s All Day Glastonbury coverage, performances from the biggest artists on-demand on BBC Sounds and over 35 hours of coverage across our TV channels. The party isn’t over yet, with over 90 sets and key tracks from the five filmed stages available to watch on BBC iPlayer – including Pyramid Stage performances in Ultra High Definition.”
Popular sets from the Festival included Pyramid Stage headliners Sir Paul McCartney and Billie Eilish, as well as incredible performances from the likes of Crowded House, Diana Ross, Little Simz, Megan Thee Stallion, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Sam Fender.
Streams increased by a staggering 116% on BBC iPlayer and 205% on BBC Sounds from 2019 when the festival was last held (up from 15.8m and 765,000 respectively). This data includes viewing and listening from Friday 10 June to Monday 27 June 2022 – and compared to the same days in 2019.
In addition to record audiences on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, millions also watched coverage across each of its TV channels, with the BBC the destination to catch all the sets and special moments from the festival.
Sir Paul McCartney’s Glastonbury performance on BBC One had a peak audience of 3.9 million and an average audience of 2.7 million and Diana Ross’ performance on BBC One had a peak audience of 3.8 million and an average audience of 3.1 million.
You can still catch over 90 sets and key tracks from the five filmed stages available to watch on BBC iPlayer – including Pyramid Stage performances in Ultra High Definition.
For a full (A-Z) list of sets, individual track performances as well as Glastonbury-related content prior to 2022 currently available on the iPlayer, click on the + button below.
Meanwhile, Glastonbury 2022 was brought to a close on Sunday (26 June) by headliner Kendrick Lamar who closed the Pyramid Stage that night.
Lamar’s performance came after the Festival made history with both the youngest-ever headliner in Gen-Z, icon Billie Eilish, and the oldest-ever headline in Sir Paul McCartney, both playing a pandemic-delayed 50th birthday bash for the greatest music festival in the world – three years after the last instalment took place in 2019.
During his historic headline performance, Macca wowed the crowds with a show-stopping setlist which included surprise guest appearances from both Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl as well as American-born Bruce Springsteen.
Other highlights included Diana Ross commanding a mammoth crowd at her Sunday teatime Legends Slot. The Motown soul singer treated the crowd to a selection of classics including I’m Coming Out, Baby Love, You Can’t Hurry Love, Stop! In The Name Of Love and at the conclusion of Chain Reaction pink confetti was launched from the stage.
While on the Saturday of the Festival, we found out Lily Allen was making her way to the Glastonbury site, thanks to an Instagram story she shared that afternoon, for what turned out to be a surprise secret guest appearance with Olivia Rodrigo on the Other Stage.
Other secret sets included performances from Jack White, who played The Park Stage on the Sunday, and George Ezra, who took to the John Peel Stage, earlier that day.
Fast forward to Monday (27 June) as the rain started to descend – following defied ominous forecasts of thunderstorms and a yellow weather warning from the Met Office – campers started packing up their belongings and leaving the Festival site on a chilly morning as the Glastonbury clean-up litter picking army was already deep-dug down into work on returning Worthy Farm to its natural clean and rubbish-free status in preparation for the next instalment of the Festival.
Glastonbury 2023 will take place at its natural home in Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset, from Wednesday the 21st to Sunday the 25th of June.
