Rolling Stones at Glastonbury viewed 700,000 times on BBC iPlayer

Stones almost twice as popular as Arctic Monkeys on iPlayer, but Monkeys were most-watched band on mobile devices


They topped the Glastonbury bill before 100,000 lucky ticket-holders, and the Rolling Stones' headline set has been watched another 700,000 times since they strutted off the Pyramid stage on Saturday night.

Highlights of the performance by Sir Mick Jagger's band, who closed their slot with the crowd-pleasers You Can't Always Get What You Want and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, were the most popular from the BBC's exhaustive online coverage of the Worthy Farm festival.

The Rolling Stones saw 700,000 requests to the BBC iPlayer, ahead of 379,681 for Friday's headliners, the Arctic Monkeys, and 163,650 for Mumford and Sons, who closed the show on Sunday night.

The broad youth appeal of the Arctic Monkeys made them the most-watched band on mobile devices, with 59% of views of the Sheffield band coming from mobiles and tablets.

The Stones' raucous set even proved more popular than some key moments from last summer's London 2012 Olympics. Usain Bolt's 100m final win drew a comparatively-sluggish 429,000 requests.

The BBC declared Glastonbury its first truly digital coverage of a music festival, with more than 250 hours of live coverage to multiple devices, and the first major non-sporting event with hundreds of hours of devoted online footage since the London 2012 Games.

Bob Shennan, the BBC's controller of popular music, said: "Glastonbury 2013 on the BBC has been outstanding. Record-breaking numbers of people tuned in to what has been our most comprehensive digital Glastonbury offering to date.

"This year, we gave our audience the opportunity to watch what they wanted, when they wanted and how they wanted. And they did."

In total, 1.5 million viewers saw the broadcaster's digital coverage of Glastonbury across the three days, with 42% watching from smartphones and tablet computers.

The corporation said it had seen huge growth in the number of people watching online from handheld devices since Christmas, and the proportion of Glastonbury mobile viewing was up compared to the Olympics, which averaged 34%.

The BBC's Red Button coverage attracted saw 6.2 million viewers, up 77% compared to the last Glastonbury festival in 2011. A peak audience of 2.6 million watched BBC2's Saturday night coverage of the Rolling Stones' first-ever Worth Farm appearance.