RTÉ Player

Sport, drama, soaps and uniquely Irish content drove RTÉ Player growth across the board in 2022 delivering a record-breaking 83,300,000 streams (+14% year-on-year) and 25,800,000 hours spent streaming (+33% versus 2021).

With unparalleled live coverage of major national and international events, RTÉ Sport streaming saw significant growth on RTÉ Player with 11,900,000 streams recorded from January to December. Highlights included FIFA World Cup 2022 (8,500,000 streams) and Six Nations 2022 (500,000 streams Mens, Womens and U20s) The Saturday/Sunday Game Live (1,642,000 streams) as well as coverage of Republic of Ireland Women’s National Team’s World Cup Qualifiers (120,000 streams 2021/2022) and the UEFA European U-21 Championship play-off between Republic of Ireland and Israel (102,600 streams).

Landmark documentary series, Quinn Country, holds 3 places in RTÉ Player Top 5 individual programmes (excluding the World Cup), beaten only by The Late Late Toy Show in popularity (341,000 streams).

Soaps remain a staple for RTÉ Player audiences, delivering 18,600,000 streams across the year with fan favourites Fair City, EastEnders and Home and Away delivering 4,800,000 streams, 5,600,000 streams and 5,700,000 streams respectively. Scripted drama and comedy box sets accounted for 15,000,000 streams in 2022 with audiences continuing to binge watch their favourite Irish and international shows including spy thriller Killing Eve (700,000 streams), Conversations with Friends (800,000 streams) along with the ever-popular Normal People (1,000,000 streams). Six episodes of Normal People featured in the Top 25 programmes of the year.

RTÉ Player Original online content published last year showcased new faces, new voices and new talent delivering 511,000 streams. Audiences engaged with a variety of themes from comedy to documentary and new faces showcased online included Shane Daniel Byrne (Love Bites), David Meyler and Ruesha Littlejohn (Glitch) Meg Reilly, Frankie McNamara, Ericka Roe, Simon Hennessy and Anna Clifford (Darren & Joe’s Free Gaff).

Darren Conway and Joseph McGucken returned for a second series of their hit RTÉ Player Original series Darren & Joe’s Free Gaff, with double the number of episodes and a host of up-and-coming Irish comedic talent including Michael Fry, James Kavanagh, Meg Reilly, Frankie McNamara, Peter McGann, Ericka Roe, Simon Hennessy, Anna Clifford, Enya Martin, Terence Power, Calvin O’Brien and season 1 regulars, Jen Hatton, Tony Cantwell and Justine Stafford. The series surpassed a quarter of a million lifetime streams since the pilot launched on RTÉ Player in 2021.

The Disconnect, a coming-of-age documentary about our relationships with our screens featured contributions from a diverse range of Irish young people who have grown up in a world where a phone is as important as food or water.

RTÉ.ie

2022 saw RTÉ.ie maintain its position as the number 1 news and entertainment website in Ireland.

Compared to 2019, visits to RTÉ.ie were up 23% per month, or 31 million monthly visits, while monthly page views grew by 19%, or 79 million page views. Average time spent per visit also continued to grow at 8 minutes 24 seconds, up 13% compared to 2019.

Top stories concerned the Ashling Murphy murder investigation and the Creeslough tragedy, but lighter stories also drew huge traffic, such as the Strictly Come Dancing stars romance and the €19 million Lotto jackpot winner. The Late Late Toy Show audience application also drew huge interest.

GAA and Katie Taylor dominated sports news with the Dublin v Kerry All Ireland GAA Championship semi-final updates taking top position followed closely by URC and Six Nations rugby. In Lifestyle, alongside wellness and beauty advice, Johnny B’s catfish story stood out. In entertainment, the Will Smith incident at the Oscars and the sad passing of a number of stars such as Olivia Newton John, Meat Loaf and Aaron Carter drew interest from our audiences.

Culture saw significant traffic to rte.ie/Ulysses, a section dedicated to James Joyce’s literary masterpiece. Brainstorm, a partnership with Irish academia, experienced a 155% increase in traffic on 2019 with insightful articles on Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis and public health threats. Our Gaeilge section saw an 88% increase on 2019, with advice for learning Irish among the top articles.

RTÉ Sport on RTÉ Player 11,900,000 streams across major national and international tournaments 2022 FIFA World Cup scores: 8,500,000 streams Over 200 hours of live coverage of all 64 games on RTÉ Player delivered record audiences with 8,500,000 total streams (including highlights and on-demand and preview streaming) 478,000 total RTÉ Player live streams for the most exciting World Cup final in history Group Stage Week 1 (20 games): 2,500,000 streams Group Stage Week 2 (28 games): 2,200,000 streams R16 (eight games): 1,200,000 streams QF (four games): 1,010,000 streams SF (two games): 402,000 streams Final: 478,000 streams

RTÉ Player launches on Sky Glass The RTÉ Player app launched on Sky Glass in August 2022. For the first time, Sky users have access to over 3,500 hours of on-demand content as well as RTÉ One, RTÉ2, RTÉjr, RTÉ News and RTÉ Player live streaming channels. The launch represents new opportunities for RTÉ Player to reach audiences through improvements in metadata, key art and curation, ensuring RTÉ content can sit among international content from global distributors.

RTÉ Archives

RTÉ Archives maintains a collection of audiovisual recordings, photographs and documents relating to RTÉ output from 1926 to the present day.

In 2022, over 3.3 million visitors to the RTÉ Archives website were able to explore a wide range of content and subject matter from a record of Irish life captured by RTÉ radio and television. A thousand new stories were added to the Archives Daily section, enabling 1.7 million video plays and 53,870 audio plays through the website, www.rte.ie/Archives.

The preservation work of transferring content from analog and early digital formats to digital files continued, focusing on audio collections in 2022. Almost 5000 recordings for radio on the Acetate Disc Collection, 1930s–1970s, were made available to the public on the RTÉ Archives website. This project was supported by the BAI Archive Funding Scheme.

The Ireland on the Box photographic exhibition, curated by RTÉ Archives with the National Library and launched in December 2021 to mark 60 years of RTÉ television, welcomed 20,364 visitors through its doors at the National Photographic Archive in Dublin’s Temple Bar.

RTÉ Archives content also featured prominently in a wide range of high-quality social, entertainment and factual award-winning television and cinematic documentaries, in Ireland and internationally. These included Vicky: The Story of Vicky Phelan, Charlie Bird: Loud and Clear, Nothing Compares (Sinead O’Connor) and Irish language programmes such as Cloch le Carn and Marú Inár Measc.

Listeners to RTÉ radio services enjoyed a range of programmes featuring archive stories including the long running Bowman Sunday series and The Rolling Wave. As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, Radio na Gaeltachta featured the 13-part 1986 series Seasca Bliain Ag Fás, with prominent interviewees in Irish language broadcasting over previous decades.