King’s Coronation the most watched programme of 2023, Virgin Media O2 says

The King’s Coronation was the most watched TV event of the year, according to new data from Virgin Media O2.

The telecoms giant said data from across its broadband, mobile and TV services also found that Wednesday is the most popular day for hybrid workers to go into the office.

However, the company said it has seen a 13% increase in data consumption on its broadband network in 2023, compared to last year, with working from home one of the key reasons alongside streaming live sport and downloading files for major gaming launches and updates.

Virgin Media O2 said working from home still appeared to be a popular option for many as it saw a 14% increase in broadband traffic between the traditional working hours of 8am and 5pm on weekdays compared to last year.

In what has been another bumper year, we continue to invest and innovate to provide vital connectivity and entertainment for our customers

Despite this, a return to the office does also appear to taking effect, with data from O2 Motion, which uses anonymised and aggregated data from O2’s mobile network showing that more people were going into the office on Wednesday than any other day of the week, and the majority were now back in the office four days a week.

Elsewhere in mobile, the telecoms firm said mobile app and data use was up 26% on last year on its O2 network, with Facebook named the most used app, with almost double the data consumption of the next most popular app YouTube.

TikTok and Netflix were next in the rankings.

And in TV, the Coronation was named the most watched standalone TV programme of the year, while the Champions League final between Manchester City and Inter Milan was the largest pay TV audience of the year with nearly a quarter of Virgin TV households watching the match.

Seven of our top 10 record days for broadband network usage occurred in 2023, fuelled by working from home and online gaming, while our mobile data usage increased by a quarter

Meanwhile, BBC iPlayer was named the most popular streaming app via Virgin Media TV, ahead of Netflix and YouTube.

“In what has been another bumper year, we continue to invest and innovate to provide vital connectivity and entertainment for our customers,” Virgin Media O2 chief technology officer Jeanie York said.

“Seven of our top 10 record days for broadband network usage occurred in 2023, fuelled by working from home and online gaming, while our mobile data usage increased by a quarter.

“Our customers’ ever-growing appetite for data demonstrates the key role we play in people’s lives and highlights why we need to keep investing and improving our products and services to ensure we match this growing demand.

“If history teaches us anything, it’s that 2024 is set to be another busy, connectivity-hungry year for our customers who continue to use our services more than ever.”