Sky’s latest market update has re-confirmed the growing importance of on-demand and catch-up viewing both to customers and the company’s future growth.
The broadcaster’s library of TV Box Sets has generated more than 600 million views since launching 2 years ago, with viewing in the current year making the service more popular than many of the channels Sky offers.
Viewers also downloaded more than 1.5bn on demand shows in 2015 via their Sky+ set top box, NOW TV accounts and Sky Go, the broadcaster’s mobile TV service which can be accessed via smartphone and tablet apps.
More than half of Sky’s 12m UK and Irish customers have now signed up to Sky Go and more than 7m homes have connected their set top box to their broadband.
Sky has also announced a 77% increase in transactions through its Sky Store movie on demand service, much of which it credits to the addition of a new ‘Buy & Keep’ option offering digital downloads of films, and confirmed that customers will soon be able to buy TV boxsets through the service, an option already offered by rivals BT and TalkTalk.
The number of customers leaving the service has fallen to its lowest level in 11 years, an achievement CEO Jeremy Darroch said was “the direct result of the investments we’ve made in connected services and quality content.”