London Olympics proved that we Indians are passionate about sports other than cricket as well. With Sushil Kumar’s silver and a handful of other medals, London Olympics 2012 has proved best ever for India.
While a large number of Indians watched the London Olympics live on television through several hours of daily programming, many got their dose of the sporting action online through YouTube and other websites related to the Games such as London2012.com.
After IPL’s record 113 million online views during its fifth edition, according to the latest data announced by market research firm IMRB International, around 1.08 million Olympics’ related views (from India) were recorded by YouTube in the two and a half weeks between July 25 to August 6. Apart from that, 4.51 million Internet users visited websites such as news.yahoo.com, indiatimes.com and nbaolymics.com, among others, to track their favourite sport.The report mentions that 7.42 million unique internet users in India consumed, i.e. read, watched videos and searched for Olympics related content. In addition to that, around 4.51 million users visited news websites such as yahoo.com, Indiatimes.com, London2012.com, DNAIndia.com and NBCOlympics.com. Surprisingly, amongst all sports disciplines, Archery tops the search list closely followed by Tennis, Badminton, Fencing and Judo.
The last three years have witnessed a substantial increase in live sports viewership. People now follow home events like the IPL and are also equally interested in major international events like the French open or the Wimbledon.
Importantly, this is the first time Youtube has been offering live streaming for Olympics, earlier during Beijing Olympics it had only offered selected video clips. this increased online viewership of London Olympics can be attributed to many factors, out of which better broadband speeds, arrival of 3G, rising penetration of internet enabled devices( smartphones and tablet) and ability to catch favourite sports on the go seem to have propelled the online viewership.
According to Google, there have been more than 31.6 million video views of the Games on the YouTube channel across the 64 countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where it’s live. In 2008, YouTube only showed some clips of the Beijing Games, and in 2010, the digital platform only provided archival content of past Winter Games.
The 64 countries were chosen based on the difficulties that people there had in gaining access to live and repeat feeds.
As far as online audience for such events is concerned, they are mainly youngsters who catch up whenever they have time. It is important for marketers to materialize this growing opportunity and make digital video a part of its media mix.
That’s one of the reasons digital advertising is expected to grow to Rs.1,990 crore from Rs.1,540 crore in 2011, according to the 2012 media and entertainment report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and KPMG. The report estimates digital advertising will expand at a compounded annual growth rate of 30% to Rs.5, 700 crore in 2018.
Talking about USA, the winners at Olympics 2012, 219.4 million U.S. viewers followed the games to watch their country grab gold after gold.
Total viewership topped the 215 million that tuned in to the Beijing broadcast, according to a statement yesterday from Comcast Corp. (CMCSA)’s NBC Universal division, which cited Nielsen ratings. NBC sold about $1.25 billion in advertising, beating the $850 million for the 2008 Olympics.
Despite the outcry over tape-delaying marquee events, including Michael Phelps’s four gold-medal swims and Gabby Douglas’s first-place performance in the women’s gymnastics all- around, NBC successfully persuaded audiences to tune in several hours after the competitions took place.
Source: mediavataar.com