Description
BritBox is an online digital video subscription service, founded by BBC Studios and ITV, operating in nine countries across North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa. It is focused on British television series and films, mainly featuring current and past series and films supplied from two British terrestrial broadcasters of the BBC and ITV (Channel 4 and Channel 5 programming are available on the UK service), in addition to original programming. BritBox is said to feature the biggest collection of British box sets available in one place, with additional original programming available from 2020.
BritBox was first launched in the United States on 7 March 2017, followed by a launch in Canada on 14 February 2018. A separately managed UK service was launched on 7 November 2019. From 2020, the service has since launched in Australia, South Africa, and in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway, through local partnerships in these four countries. The service in the UK and the international services are operated differently, and host differing content, including BritBox UK's exclusive original content. There are content restrictions between each platform, leading some content to be available on one platform and unavailable on another.
BritBox provides new episodes to British soaps and dramas such as EastEnders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale, within hours of their UK broadcast via BritBox's 'Now' feature to US and Canadian users, but also includes extensive archives of older programming, such as the popular Doctor Who classic series on the service. It reported a subscriber base of 250,000 within a year of launching in the US. In 2019, 650,000 subscribers were reported from the North American platform. In early 2020, the number of US and Canadian subscribers surpassed 1 million users, to around 1.2 million by August, and 1.5 million by October, following strong growth in the North American service due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 9 March 2021, it was reported that the UK service had surpassed 500,000 subscribers, meeting BritBox's UK target. Will Harrison, BritBox UK's managing director told members of the UK Broadcasting Press Guild that BritBox was "very happy" at how the service had performed since its November 2019 launch. By 1 July 2022, it had reached 2.6 million.
