Over half of YouTube’s U.K. audience watches via a television set, according to the latest viewing habits report from U.K. ratings body Barb.
According to the report, published today, while almost half of YouTube viewing is on smartphones, tablets and laptops, 54% is on a TV set across all demographics. Barb now calls the video platform a “significant part of the U.K.’s AV ecosystem.”
YouTube is also the fourth most-viewed navigation platform making it, in Barb’s view, as much of a “gateway to content” as EPGs on traditional cable and satellite platforms. According to the report, ITV’s average YouTube reach via a TV set for its content was 4.9 million in 2025. For Sky that figure was 3.4 million and for Channel 4 it was 2.5 million.
Which means that as well as being a place for content creators to start their careers before crossing over to “traditional” broadcasters or streamers, such as Mr Beast and Mark Rober, TV companies are increasingly looking to the tech company for discovery.
BBC Studios is among a number of traditional TV companies who have inked a partnership with YouTube. Last year the production company’s digital SVP Jasmine Dawson took part in a joint Mipcom panel with YouTube’s EMEA boss Pedro Pina, in which she extolled the benefits of working with the tech company. “We’re not sacrificing anything,” she said. “Actually it’s incremental. And that is a really powerful conversation to have our distribution partners, whether it’s ‘Bluey’ with Disney or some of our BBC Earth titles with PBS and other distributors, they understand that this is where the fandom grows, and then it drives incrementality.”
However YouTube is bested by Netflix when it comes to switch on, meaning where a viewer goes first when they switch on their TV. According to this metric, a third of viewers go to traditional broadcasters, a third to streamers and YouTube combined and a third everywhere else.
Of the third who go to the streamers/YouTube, Netflix leads the way with 14% of the audience going to the “Love is Blind” streamer first compared to YouTube’s 10%.
For 16–34-year-olds Netflix is the most popular platform and where 26% of that demographic go upon first switching on the TV. For children aged 4-15 years old 26% head to YouTube first in any viewing session with the TV set the most-used device for watching the platform.
Other significant trends show the continued decline of live TV from 60% of all viewing on a TV set in 2022 to 45% in Dec. 2025. Unsurprisingly sport continues to be a big driver of live TV, with the Women’s Euros final, which saw England defeat Spain, draw in a combined average audience of 9.8 million across the BBC and ITV, of which 94% of people watched it live.
Family viewing also continues to pull in large live audiences, who consider it appointment viewing, including the Eurovision Song Contest grand final, “Celebrity Traitors” and even “Gogglebox.”
On-demand streaming continues to account for a large number of views, amounting to 38% of U.K. viewing in 2025. Curiously, a large proportion of viewing on Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Netflix — the U.K.’s three biggest streamers – was library content that had been available for more than 12 months. According to Barb, “Bluey” accounted for 4.2% of all TV set viewing of Disney+.
“Commentary about television is too often based on a binary premise that ignores a more complex reality,” said Barb CEO Justin Sampson. “Barb’s independent evidence points to a world in which viewing is defined more by adaptation than disruption.”
“The prognosis is more connected, nuanced and resilient than the clichés and partial viewpoints suggest. Live audiences are healthy, children and young people haven’t deserted linear services, and there’s an increasingly symbiotic relationship between all services and platforms in the TV ecosystem.”
English (US) ·