Olympics break iPlayer records

Interest in the Olympic Games attracted record numbers of users to the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service in August.

The month saw a record 196 million iPlayer requests, the public broadcaster said. The week commencing July 30 saw the highest-ever requests per week at 51 million from a record 11 million users.

August also saw record requests from mobile and tablet devices with 22 million coming from mobile devices and 17 million from tablets. Live TV was also more popular than ever, making up almost a third of all requests.

The opening ceremony of the Olympic was the most-requested programme in July with 3.9 million requests, and with 2.1 million requests the closing ceremony was the most popular iPlayer programme in August.