TV viewership in Italy remained relatively stable in H1 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. While overall daily viewership remained slightly above 8.55 million, prime-time audiences increased marginally by 0.5 per cent to 20.12 million, according to Italy’s Communications Regulatory Authority.
However, compared to 2020, both daily and prime-time viewership declined significantly, by 21.8 per cent and 19.4 per cent, respectively. This trend, continues from pre-pandemic levels in 2019, with a 2.39 million decrease in daily viewers and a 4.85 million drop in prime-time audiences.
Italian public broadcaster Rai surpassed commercial rival Mediaset in average daily viewers (3.21 million vs 3.16 million), experiencing slight year-over-year declines. Over the longer term, Rai lost 1.07 million viewers (25.1 per cent) while Mediaset lost 660,000 (17.3 per cent).
In terms of market share, Rai edged out Mediaset by 0.5 percentage points in the first half of 2024, while in 2020, Rai’s lead was more substantial at 4.3 percentage points.
Other key players like Warner Bros Discovery (+13 per cent to 770,000) and Comcast/Sky (+1.3 per cent to 630,000) experienced growth in the first half of 2024, while Cairo Communication/La7 saw a significant 11.2 per cent increase.
In the prime-time segment, Rai increased its viewership to 7.88 million daily viewers, slightly ahead of Mediaset’s 7.13 million. Rai’s viewership increased marginally, while Mediaset’s declined. WBD with 1.74 million daily viewers (+24.8 per cent) surpassed Comcast/Sky (-2.2 per cent to 1.47 million) in prime-time viewership, while Cairo Communication/La7 saw 17.3 per cent growth to 1.18 million.
Analysing individual channels, Rai 1, Italia 1, Rete 4, La7, and Nove saw growth in the first half of 2024, while Rai 3, TV8, and Canale 5 experienced declines.
SVoD platforms lsuch as Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Now collectively reached 14.35 million unique users, a slight increase from the previous year. However, Netflix experienced an 8.7 per cent decline in average users, down to 8.2 million, while Prime Video (+5 per cent to 6.8 million), Disney+ (+6.2 per cent to 3.6 million), and Now (+24.9 per cent to 1.4 million) all saw growth. Total viewing time on these platforms in June 2024 was approximately 40 million hours (+1.6% year-on-year).
Sports streaming platform DAZN registered 2.1 million unique users in the country, a slight decrease.
Free VoD platforms, such as News Mediaset Sites, Sky TG24, and RaiPlay, reached over 34 million unique users in June 2024, but this number declined compared to 2023. Despite this, total viewing time and average viewing time per user increased by 2.7 per cent for these platforms.