After a year which could be described as an annus horribilis for the national broadcaster, 2023 turned out to be the best year yet for the RTÉ Player with the free live and on-demand streaming service on track to deliver a record 100 million streams, 35 million streaming hours and reaching 1.8 million unique users per month by the end of the year. The good news was mainly down to a strong line-up of popular dramas and major sports events.
The RTÉ Player top 10 reveals the favourite shows which Irish audiences streamed most in 2023, including soaps like EastEnders, Home & Away and Fair City, to critically-acclaimed drama series such as Kin, Happy Valley and Love/Hate. On the sports front the most watched live action events included the Rugby World Cup in France to The All-Ireland Senior GAA Championship and the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia.
Fair City, EastEnders, Home and Away and Neighbours had more than 20 million streams in 2023.
Viewers accessed RTÉ Player to binge home-grown documentaries. Gaelic in the Joy, Dr Cassidy’s Casebook and The Case I Can’t Forget were a hit with streamers, along with comedy series The Young Offenders, Sisters and Colin from Accounts. Viewers turned to RTÉ Player for entertainment throughout the year to watch The Late Late Show, The Tommy Tiernan Show and First Dates Ireland.
Oscar-nominated short film, An Irish Goodbye was the Player’s most streamed film of the year.
July 26 was the biggest day of the year on RTÉ Player with over 250,000 hours of content streamed on the day that Katie McCabe led the Republic of Ireland against Canada during the FIFA Women’s World Cup. RTÉ Player’s content for kids saw the likes of Peppa Pig and Bluey as top attractions in 2023, along with Irish language programme Peppa Muc and award-winning Dizzy Deliveries – the first series to teach children Irish lámh (hand) signs.
RTÉ Player Originals continued to launch new faces and formats online with home renovation series Relove My Space presented by Fionnuala Jones and Paul Kinsella taking the top spot in this category, and Anna Clifford’s new series Ireland’s Perfect Pubs which launched in October.
The most-watched episode of Fair City was from April 16, when Halley discovered that Rafferty’s meetings at McCoy’s were not what they seemed.
The most watched EastEnders episode was in January, with the fallout from the Slater’s New Year’s Eve party.
The source for the streaming data was Piano Analytics.
Top 10 programmes on RTÉ Player in 2023
| 1 | EastEnders |
| 2 | Home and Away |
| 3 | Fair City |
| 4 | Kin |
| 5 | The Saturday/Sunday Game |
| 6 | Rugby World Cup 2023 |
| 7 | Happy Valley |
| 8 | Love/Hate |
| 9 | The Late Late Show |
| 10 | FIFA Women’s World Cup |
