BBC Music and Glastonbury agree a six-year broadcast partnership

BBC Music today announces a historic deal to bring the glory of Glastonbury to BBC audiences for the next five festivals.
The world’s most famous music festival will be broadcast on the BBC until 2022, including the festival’s 50th anniversary year in 2020, and 2022, the BBC’s 100th anniversary year. There will be a fallow year in 2018.

Bob Shennan, BBC Director of Radio and Music, says: “This partnership confirms our ongoing commitment to placing music centre stage on the BBC, and presenting our programmes to a global audience via radio, online, television and BBC Red Button. As Glastonbury is one of the world’s leading musical celebrations, I’m delighted that the BBC will be its broadcast home until 2022, the BBC’s 100th anniversary year, bringing the magical joy of Worthy Farm to everyone, whether at home or on the move.”

Emily Eavis says: “We have worked closely with a fantastic team at the BBC since 1997, it has become an integral part of what we do at Glastonbury. Together we have created something really special – two decades of historic live broadcast from many of the biggest names in contemporary music. We are all very excited to look ahead to another five Glastonburys alongside the much treasured BBC.”

In 2016, the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage on TV reached a record-breaking 18.9m people (31.9 percent of the UK population).

Last year, TV coverage saw the presenting team of Chris Evans, Jo Whiley, Dermot O’Leary, Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq, Cerys Matthews, Trevor Nelson, Mark Radcliffe, Huw Stephens, Gemma Cairney, Greg James, Annie Mac, Yasser, Clara Amfo, Alice Levine, DJ Target and Martin Dougan broadcast over 25 hours of TV coverage spread across BBC One (The One Show), BBC Two and BBC Four, as well as over 60 hours of content spread across BBC Radio 1, Radio 1Xtra, BBC Radio 2, BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 4. Digital coverage included live-streams from six key music stages including the BBC Music Introducing stage which supports unsigned and under the radar musicians.