Monday, August 11, 2008

Olympic Ratings reveal valuable viewership stats

America's love affair with sports continues to grow, just ask the head execs at NBC, which has enjoyed its highest TV ratings since 1996, when the event was on our home turf in Atlanta. Saturday's opening ceremony drew an estimated 34.2 million viewers, which was 11 million more than the  2004 audience. 90% of the viewers watched on NBC and 10% watched on nbcolympics.com, with 0.2% watching on the internet alone.
An excerpt from the Wall Street Journal Article reads:

The streaming will not diminish the ratings, said Neal Pilson, a sports-media consultant who advised the International Olympic Committee in negotiations for broadcast rights. It encourages viewers and provides them with information. There will be no dilution or fragmentation of the national audience. 

On the surface, higher nielsen ratings appear to be a strong indication that NBC’s TV audience hasn’t suffered a March Madness inverse result- where TV ratings decreased and web viewership increased. Instead, the combination appears to be mutually beneificial.
 While there may be many factors for the stronger numbers, it’s important to remember that the NCAAtournament attracts many causal, short-term viewers- everyone from the secretary to the CEO, who occasionaly check a few scores to track their status office betting pool. The olympics attracts also many casual viewers, but it also draws a high amount of passionate fans from each sport. As a result, the Olympics attracts steady viewership in several different demographic groups.
For example, on Sunday, I watched the entire first half of USA basketball vs. China (praying that Dwight Howard would avoid any serious injury). Today, during my lunch break, I tuned away from women’s water polo within a couple of seconds.Conversely, my best friend’s wife, who’s the same age as me, will watch an entire volleyball match but probably won’t devote a second of her time to any basketball game. (I must admit, after seeing USA's volleyball team, I may have to jump on that bandwagon)
With a plethora of games each day, the resulting clutter of scores and medal counts can become a little overwhelming, and nbcolympics.com  gives each viewer a chance to sort through the clutter and find the next game for their favorite sport.

The key number to watch this year, and in the years to follow, is the 10% who watch at nbcolympics.com and on TV. As more TV viewers are acclimated to webcasts, I expect that combined-media audience number to reach 20-30% for the 2012 Olympics in London.
 

Posted By Matt O'Hern at 04:30 PM
Permanent Link: Olympic Ratings reveal valuable viewership stats | Comments (0)

Post a Comment