EXCLUSIVE: Netflix was the most-watched TV service in the UK for three months last year, overtaking dominant domestic network BBC1 for the first time, according to a Deadline analysis.
The unseating of Britain’s most popular channel may not have been permanent, but it represents a possible inflection point in the battle between traditional broadcasters and U.S. streaming giants. The BBC said it was “meaningless” to compare the entirety of Netflix with a single channel and that its portfolio had double the number of viewers of the Squid Game streamer.
Viewing figures from BARB, the UK’s official ratings body, showed that Netflix’s audience reach overtook BBC1 in September, October, and November 2024 (chart below). For these three months, Netflix’s average audience reach stood at 43.2M, compared with BBC1’s 42.3M viewers.
BBC1 pulled ahead again in December, despite Netflix posting a record reach of 46.4M after streaming series including UK original Black Doves. BBC1’s reach was 48.4M last month, no doubt buoyed by festive hits including Gavin & Stacey and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
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Netflix has been consistently ahead of ITV1, the UK’s second-largest TV network, since March 2023. ITV1 overtook Netflix briefly last summer, when its audience jumped up during Euro 2024 before dropping dramatically in August.
Audience reach measures the number of people who watched a television service for at least three consecutive minutes in a month. The figures date back to October 2022, when Netflix first signed up to be measured by BARB in the UK.
As with all ratings, information can be cut in several ways and UK broadcasters will cite other data points — such as audience share and viewing hours — showing they are ahead of Netflix. For example, an ITV source says it had 12.3 billion viewer hours in 2024, which was 42% higher than Netflix’s 8.7 billion.
Monthly audience reach is one measure, not the perfect measure. Deadline is focusing on it here because it is one of the main open-access data points published on the BARB website. The BBC also cites reach figures as one of the key performance metrics for its TV channels in its annual report.
BBC1 and ITV1 have been the UK’s most-watched networks for decades, but like all traditional broadcasters around the world, are suffering ratings drops amid the rise of online viewing.
The audience reach data analyzed by Deadline says as much about the decline of these linear broadcasting services as it does about the growth of Netflix, which has been steady rather than spectacular over the past two years in Britain.
The BBC and ITV would also argue that their own viewers have migrated to iPlayer and ITVX, meaning it is not fair to compare Netflix with individual channels. Both regularly deploy a digital-first strategy, meaning episodes of tent-pole shows premiere online before linear television.
Netflix tends to measure itself against portfolios of channels in the UK rather than individual networks. Using this as a starting point, the BBC is comfortably ahead of all rivals when you measure its entire suite of channels, including BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, and BBC News.
The BBC’s total audience reach in December was 52.7M, compared with Netflix’s 46.4M (chart below). Netflix is, however, knocking on the door of ITV’s portfolio (they were basically neck-and-neck last month) and is now consistently ahead of Channel 4 and Channel 5/Paramount.
A BBC spokeswoman said: “To compare a single broadcast channel with an entire SVOD service is meaningless in an on-demand world.
“We are digital first and nearly all of our comedy and drama is released as a day one drop on BBC iPlayer. The BBC portfolio is almost twice the size of Netflix over the year and bigger than all of the SVODs put together. BBC iPlayer is the fastest growing TV streaming service in the UK.”
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