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Acast released new listening figures after reporting it had a very good weekend of listens. The company says the weekend of March 21-22 saw a 7% increase in listens, equivalent to over 750,000 listens.
With sporting events around the world being cancelled or postponed indefinitely, sport-related podcasts have clearly taken a hit. Listens to podcasts in Acast’s Sport and Recreation category over the weekend were down 2%.
Other genres saw spikes in listening over the weekend including Education, Entertainment, Science & Medicine, and Health all up over 10%.
Acast’s data also shows an increase in the number of podcasts covering the coronavirus with more than 1,400 podcast episodes now hosted on its network since Jan 22. These episodes have been downloaded more than 27.5 million times.
Susie Warhurst, SVP of Content at Acast, said: “It’s incredibly heartening — but not surprising — to see podcasters adapting to these new challenges. Podcasting is a digital medium in almost every sense, so we have total flexibility to carry on putting out top quality shows no matter what.