Audiences may be fragmented but half the world tuned in to some part of the Summer Olympic Games in Rio on traditional television, says the International Olympics Committee.
According to the IOC, some 3.6 billion people — just over half of the world’s total population of 7 billion people — saw at least one minute of the Games. And it’s likely that most of those viewers saw much more than that.
The IOC also says that approximately 342 million people watched the Opening Ceremonies from Rio, which was on par with the size of the audience that watched from London in 2012. Beijing in 2008 was the all-time with 1 billion people tuning in, but China is the most-populated country in the world and having the Games on home turf is a significant advantage.
Ratings for the Olympics on traditional TV have undeniably declined, particularly in the U.S., but the IOC says viewing across all platforms is comparable to London.
Moreover, pure output has been stepped up considerably, with the IOC saying that TV coverage has increased 25 percent to 125,000 hours compared to London, while some 81,500 hours of coverage were produced for digital platforms, two-and-a-half times what was available from London.
In fact, Timo Lumme, managing director of IOC television and marketing services, told Reuters that NBC’s online viewership of 2 billion streaming minutes and counting is more than the streaming for the previous five Olympics combined.
How the viewership shift will affect advertising and licensing rates for the Games remains to be seen. NBC has locked up rights for the Olympics in the U.S. through 2032 so there’s plenty of time for these issues to be sorted out before the Games come up for bidding again, at least stateside. The IOC says TV revenue is up 7.1 percent over the previous four years — the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 and Summer Olympics in London in 2012 — to $4.1 billion.
READ MORE: The Hollywood Reporter, Reuters
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