Festive sport – including Luke Littler’s dominate display at the World Darts Championships at ‘The Nuke’ clinched his second consecutive championship victory – boosted Sport as 2025 ended and 2026 began. Our latest living audience intelligence has more…
Topical News
A show-stopping festive sporting schedule drove sport-loving Brits to a range of seasonal favourites – including Football, Darts and American football – lifting Sport to overall category engagement growth of 21% last week. Although Boxing Day featured only one English Premier League game, the busy ‘betwixtmas’ schedule caused Football page views to grow by 12%. Luke Littler cemented his status as the golden child of darts, winning his second consecutive World Darts Championship title to drive engagement with the sport to triple the previous week. Meanwhile, the NFL’s growing popularity in the UK, bolstered by Christmas games streamed live on Netflix, boosted engagement with the sport by nearly 10%. Sporting Events and Sport TV content both enjoyed a seasonal lift, with page views up 2.5x and 50% respectively.
The UK cold snap – with temperatures dropping below freezing across the country and snow falling or forecast in early January – gave Brits something familiar to talk about as 2026 began. Weather page views more than doubled last week as winter weather proper set in.
Seasonal Events
The return to school following the Christmas holidays has driven expected growth for Education engagement, which increased by 82% last week. January’s looming school application deadline for parents caused Primary Education page views to double, while the first UCAS application window of the year boosted College Life engagement by 77%.
Health goal-setting following Christmas excess – as Brits focus on their New Year fitness drives – boosted Healthy Living page views by 59% last week. Among the content topics driving growth were Nutrition, Fitness & Exercise and Weight Loss, with page views increasing by between 2.5 and 3x.
A combination of festive and New Year journeys, alongside 2026 holiday planning on ‘Sunshine Saturday’ (one of the travel industry’s busiest booking days), caused Travel engagement to surge by almost a third. Travel Locations, including Europe (specifically Greece and France) and North America, grew by 50%-80%. Travel Type, including Road and Rail travel, increased by a quarter as journeys to and from home became a key focus.
