VANCOUVER – It’s not just TV audiences that are through the roof. The 2010 Olympic Winter Games have broken records in digital viewership, too.
By the end of day 10, the Olympics-dedicated websites CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca had more than 110.6 million total page views, or more than twice as many as the Beijing Games in 2008. Meanwhile, each day of the Games has recorded an average of 11 million page views.
On-line audiences have taken in 8.4 million live events, and watched 9.2 million on-demand videos, for a total of 17.6 million videos viewed. These numbers are already more than three times those reported for Beijing (4.9 million), and in the case of on-demand viewing, the sites have served up five times the number of streams.
“We’re seeing an incredible adoption rate of live-event online video,” said Alon Marcovici, VP of digital media and research for Canada’s Olympic broadcast media consortium, in a statement. “The number of people watching online and the interaction we’re having with our audience has exceeded our expectations. We’re finding that with a high-quality broadcast-like experience, viewers will watch live events online in massive numbers.”
The websites’ video player has also proven popular, with viewers averaging 51 minutes of video each day of the Games. The CTVOlympics.ca branded YouTube channel has delivered more than two million video views to date, while the CTV Olympics and RDS olympiques mobile apps have been downloaded 209,000 times.
