2023 was the biggest year ever for 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 RTÉ Player Top 10 reveals that Irish audiences love to stream a wide range of content from their daily consumption of soaps including EastEnders, Home & Away and Fair City, to critically acclaimed drama including KIN, Happy Valley and Love/Hate, and never miss a moment of live action sport from the Rugby World Cup to The All-Ireland Senior GAA Championship and the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Viewers accessed RTÉ Player to binge home-grown documentaries including Gaelic in the Joy, Dr Cassidy’s Casebook and The Case I Can’t Forget were a hit with streamers, along with hit 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 most streamed film of the year on RTÉ Player. July 26^th 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 in a crucial clash against Canada during the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

RTÉ Player offers a large selection of content for kids. Peppa Pig and Bluey were hits in 2023, along with Irish language programme Peppa Muc and award-winning Dizzy Deliveries - the first programme to teach children Irish lámh 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.

Soaps on RTÉ Player including Fair City, EastEnders, Home and Away and Neighbours had more than 20 million streams in 2023. The most-watched episode of Fair City was from April 16^th, when Halley discovered that Rafferty’s meetings at McCoy’s were not what they seemed. The most watched episode of EastEnders was from January 5^th, with the fallout from the Slater’s New Year’s Eve party coming to a dramatic conclusion.

Speaking about the success of RTÉ Player over the past 12 months, Head of RTÉ Player Aoife Byrne said: “2023 was the biggest year ever for RTÉ Player – on target to reach 100 million streams by year end is double where we were a few years ago. Alongside the big live events like the Women’s World Cup, The Sunday Game Live, The Rugby World Cup and The Late Late Toy Show, audiences binged an array of big drama boxsets including KIN, Happy Valley, Smother and One Tree Hill and TV series such as The Room to Improve, Home of the Year and the ever-popular Soaps.

Over the last year we’ve added more choice than ever before in every genre on RTÉ Player, and continued our investment to ensure audiences have a great streaming experience, live and on-demand. We have also extended availability of our RTÉ Player app across more TV platforms than ever before. There’s plenty more in store for 2024.”

Stream anytime on rte.ie/player