UAE residents are spending fewer hours watching TV but on demand streaming remains steady since 2022

Latest data from YouGov’s media report titled ‘The 2024 Media morph’ revealed that TV viewing seems to have declined among UAE residents. A higher proportion of UAE residents spent less than 10 hours per week on live TV viewership in 2023 compared to two years ago (54% in 2021 to 70% in 2023). On the other hand, watching TV via a video on demand streaming service saw a slight increase from 84% in 2022 to 86% in 2023.

Leveraging its audience segmentation tool, YouGov Profiles, this report explores shifts in media habits of UAE residents over the last few years and details the adoption of online media.

All platforms have experienced increased usage in the last two years, but Amazon Prime and YouTube have had the largest uplift (of +10 and + 9 respectively) between the two time periods.

Among the different age groups, GenZ are the most likely to use on demand catch up services. They are also more likely than others to say that live TV is a thing of the past (44% Genz vs 38% gen pop).

YouTube continues to dominate GenZs top choice for on-demand TV and has grown the most in the last 2 years followed by Amazon Prime and Disney+.

A glance at their listening behaviour shows that 36% of UAE residents are streaming music for 6 or more hours weekly. YouTube Music & Spotify are the most popular streaming services used and witnessed the highest growth in the last two years.

Again, we see the Gen Z stream more music, with 27% listening for 11+ hours weekly, compared to 20% of the general population.

Although Spotify is the most popular platform among them, Google Podcast has witnessed a growth of 5% among the GenZ cohort.

To download the full report, click here.

Methodology: YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data for UAE is representative of the national population (18 years or older), and weighted by gender, age, region and monthly household income. For this report, data was collected in December 2023, using a minimum base size of N=300. Learn more about Profiles.