1. The Challenge
KPI: To convert BBC Homepage traffic into live music watches on iPlayer, sifting through 90 hours of coverage.
There is something for every taste at the world’s greatest music festival - I just needed to find the right content for my 5 million daily browsers and present it well.
2. Research & Insight
Previous Glastonbury coverage has focused on headliners and heritage acts that an older Homepage audience would be familiar with.
Hypothesis: The same audience would get greater value from deeper curation - handpicked moments and hidden highlights that would bring our audience up to date with the zeitgeist, as well as platforming old favourites.
3. Strategy
Using the team around me to pitch their personal Glastonbury stand-out moments allowed me to draw up a long-list of diverse artists spanning genre and decades.
From this long list I prioritised storyfinding - looking for viral moments, breakout artists and emotional beats beyond the headliners.
Focusing on moments not songs, images that captured emotion and atmosphere, and headlines that sold a feeling not a song title I made a series of high-impact collections.
4. Result
The collection performed so strongly it remained on the page for seven days after the festival.
The average click-through rate was more than double the benchmark for the previous year.
Focusing on lesser-known acts also doubled the click-through rate - heritage act Gary Numan and zeitgesty superstar Lola Young both massively outperformed headliners Pulp, Charli XCX and The 1975.
This collection alone drove 100K additional clicks from Homepage to iPlayer, and contributed to 3M total Homepage clicks for the festival, a 139% YOY increase.
2025 was Glastonbury’s biggest ever year on the BBC, with 58% YOY increase in plays.
It was the most watched digital event across all our audience map segments.
