Comcast said its third annual Xfinity Watchathon Week – a cross-platform VOD binge-fest held April 6-12 -- broke more records as customers gobbled down 56 million hours of video, up 13% from last year’s Watchathon.
For the first time, Xfinity On Demand, Comcast’s VOD service for set-tops, exceeded 1 million streams on consecutive days – on Friday (April 10) and Saturday (April 11) – according to this blog post from Andy Hunter, vice president of programming at Comcast Cable.
The event also saw a boost in TV Everywhere usage. Per Hunter, Comcast subs tapped Xfinity TV Go, the MSO’s TVE app for mobile devices, and authenticated on programmer-run TVE apps to watch more than 3 million hours of comedies, dramas and reality TV during Watchathon Week. That was a 64% increase from last year’s tilt.
HBO’s Game of Thrones was the most-viewed show during this year’s event, with the season five premiere tallying 3.2 million views across the MSO’s Xfinity TV platforms within the first three days. The next most-watched shows were Outlander (Starz), Shameless (Showtime), Empire (Fox), and The Royals (E!).
Chicago, Boston and Comcast’s hometown of Philadelphia were the MSO’s top viewing cities during the week-long event.
“For the first time, time-shifted viewing across TV Everywhere platforms kept pace with VOD and DVR consumption—with 653,000 on Xfinity On Demand, 699,000 on the DVR, and 660,000 on Xfinity TV Go and HBO GO—confirming that the viewing preferences of our customers continue to evolve,” Hunter wrote, noting that Comcast is planning to do bring Watchathon Week back for a fourth-consecutive year in 2016.
