A Compendium of Rio 2016 Olympics Stats

Snapchat viewing 
"Almost 50 million people have watched the Olympic Games on Snapchat so far, as broadcasters including NBC and the BBC use the app to reach a millennial audience.
Nearly one in three daily Snapchat users has viewed the clips in Live Stories, showing that the app could challenge other social sites such as Facebook and Twitter for dominance in live events.
The LA-based start-up partnered with broadcasters in seven countries including the US, the UK and Brazil to show stories that include footage from the games and from the crowds in the last 24 hours.
In the first seven days to last Thursday, 49 million unique visitors viewed Olympics content on Snapchat, almost a third of the 150 million daily active users of the app."
Source:  Irish Times, 15th August 2016

Over 5bn viewers globally
"Heading up this vast operation is Yannis Exarchos, who runs Olympic Broadcast Services on behalf of the International Olympic Committee, and says that the Rio Games saw internet and on-line viewership as big a factor as [conventional] television. He added that social media helped drive this digital audience to Rio, and took this year’s viewing numbers to a record 5 billion users. Within the first 4 days of competition more people had watched Olympic activity on second screens than during the whole London Games of 2012.
Within 10 days of the start of the Rio Games the on-line streaming numbers had passed the two previous Olympics (London and Sochi). Ratings agency Nielsen said more than 2 billion minutes (33 million hours) were consumed in the US alone in the first 10 days of competition.
Exarchos also said that this year’s experimental Virtual Reality (VR) programming was also a huge hit with viewers, and by Tokyo in 2020 VR and 360-degree material could be a very important factor for consumers and where viewers are at the centre of the action right alongside the athletes."

Source:  Advanced Television, 23rd August 2016

NBC's US TV viewing fell 15% vs London 2012
"While Mr. Burke's nightmare scenario didn't play out to the letter, the final Nielsen numbers were fairly grim. Through the 17 nights of ceremonies and competition, NBC averaged 26 million viewers and a 14.9 household rating, which marked a 15% decline from the 2012 Summer Games' draw of 31.1 million viewers and a 17.5 rating. (Rio's ratings reflect NBC's Total Audience Delivery, a metric that blends broadcast and cable prime-time deliveries with streaming data.)
More importantly, NBC missed its ratings guarantees by 3.1 points, or 17%, a result that found the network working overtime to make its advertisers whole through Sunday's closing ceremony. Media buyers last week said they were satisfied with NBC's make-good efforts but said that they expected some high-end clients to receive complimentary units in the network's Sunday and Thursday night football packages as a goodwill gesture. (UPDATE: NBC said that all of its Olympics advertisers were made whole within the Games themselves and that the network would not be offering so-called audience deficiency units in the fall."
Source:  AdAge, 25th August 2016

NBCU on TV and Snapchat
"NBCUniversal decided to turn over the keys to its Snapchat account to BuzzFeed for the Olympics. The move seems to have paid off to the tune of 35 million viewers over two weeks.
In April, the media giant announced a partnership with Snapchat, under which it would distribute Olympics-related content on the media and messaging app. The content was available in two ways: a pop-up Snapchat Discover channel and multiple daily Live Stories. Across both, NBCU totaled 2.2 billion views and 230 million minutes of consumption, the company said.
With the Discover channel, NBCU gave near-total editorial control to 12 BuzzFeed video producers it had invited down to Rio (NBCUniversal invested $200 million in BuzzFeed last year). “We would talk to them every morning — what we were focusing on and the stories that were emerging, and there would be some coordination that way,” said Gary Zenkel, president of strategy and operations for NBC Sports Group and president of NBC Olympics. “But we did not want to impair their ability to exercise and flex their creative muscles for that day’s edition."
Source:  Digiday, 25th August 2016

7.5bn video streams watched in China
"Shanghai-based Alisports, a division of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said it saw similar success streaming the Olympics in China through a partnership with online video hub Youku Tudou.
A total of 7.5 billion streams were watched by Olympics fans in China, according to newly released figures from Alisports.
Alisports last month had announced a licensing agreement with Chinese state-owned CCTV to stream the Rio Olympics via Youku, which is also owned by Alibaba, albeit with a 30-minute delay to CCTV’s own broadcast. About 380 million viewers logged on to watch, Alisports said. That’s almost half the size of the traditional television audience of 793 million claimed by CCTV."

Source:  Alizilla, 26th August 2016

35m in the US watched Usain Bolt's 100m live - AdAge, 17th August 2016

BBC - A breakdown of access by devices - 14th August 2016

Flurry - App usage - 24th August 2016

19m unique browsers visited BBC Sport on 'Super Sunday' during Rio 2016

"BBC Sport cemented its position as the number one digital destination for sport as record numbers accessed digital services. This week has been the biggest ever week for BBC Sport online with 58.2m global unique browsers following the action from the Rio Olympics, the return of the Premier League and England’s Test match v Pakistan from around the world.
The new seven-day record for BBC Sport digital traffic smashes the previous record of 41.4m set during the first week of Euro 2016. Of the 58.2m unique browsers, 40.3m came from the UK, setting another personal best for the BBC.
And like many of the Olympians competing in Rio, BBC Sport beat its own record for daily traffic which stood at 14.6m unique browsers from the day England faced Wales at Euro 2016, five times since the start of the Games. It now stands at 19m for Super Sunday as fans followed Team GB’s historic medal haul.
Mobile
Audiences have been glued to the action on their mobile devices throughout the Games and the BBC Sport mobile app had its biggest ever week with 4.4m unique browsers. Sunday was a record day for mobile audiences overall too, with 2.7m browsers in the app contributing to 8.4m unique browsers overall, beating the previous record of 6.3m.
Personal
The opening week of the Games has also seen people personalise the BBC Sport digital service more than ever before, a record 347k unique browsers visited the ‘My Sport’ area of the website, with over 500k topics followed.
Online Video
An enormous 81.2m have accessed video clips, catch-up services and watched live streams across BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer since the start of the Games, with audiences using the digital service to watch both live and on-demand.
Team GB’s success has also led to a record week for the BBC Sport app on Connected TV with 1.74m browsers and an all-time high of 1.67m using the BBC’s Red Button+ service."
Source:  BBC Media Centre, 15th August 2016

The first week of the World Cup generated more Facebook interactions than The Super Bowl, Sochi and The Oscars combined

"In the lead up to the World Cup, Facebook launched ‘Trending World Cup’ and ‘Facebook Ref’ to keep fans informed and engaged throughout the world’s most popular sports event. We’re just one week into the tournament, and even Facebook must be surprised by the results so far: Between June 12 and June 18 more people have talked about the World Cup on Facebook than the number of people who talked about this year’s Super Bowl, Oscars and Sochi Games, combined.
With three weeks left of games, the World Cup will surely set the bar (and an extremely high one at that) for event-based social engagement. Here’s how the first week of World Cup Facebook chatter stacks up to the aforementioned events:
World Cup Week 1 (June 12 – June 18): 141M people – 459M interactions (posts, comments and likes)
Super Bowl XVIII on Feb. 2:  50M people – 185M interactions (posts, comments and likes)
Sochi Games, Feb. 6-23:  45M people – 120M interactions (posts, comments and likes)
86th Academy Awards on Mar. 2:  11.3M people – 25.4M interactions (posts, comments and likes)"

The London 2012 Olympics 'was the most watched TV event in US History'

"Roughly 217 million people in the United States watched the London Games, making it the most watched television event in history. And unlike other big, live events like the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards, the Olympics offer researchers a prolonged, 17-day period during which to study behavior.
That sandbox showed that eight million people downloaded NBC’s mobile apps for streaming video, and there were two billion page views across all of NBC’s Web sites and apps. Forty-six percent of 18- to 54-year-olds surveyed said they “followed the Olympics during my breaks at work,” and 73 percent said they “stayed up later than normal” to watch, according to a survey of about 800 viewers by the market research firm uSamp.
Forty-six percent said they “delayed doing laundry and other household chores” to catch events like gymnastics, where the United States inched out a win over Russia and Romania for the gold, and swimming, where Michael Phelps narrowly came in second in the men’s 200-yard butterfly."

Source:  New York Times, 25th September 2012

Note - As I pointed out when the UK figures were reported, it's not that helpful to compare a sporting event spread out over more than 2 weeks to a single televised TV event

There were over 600,000 check ins at London 2012 Olympic venues on Facebook

This just in. 623,957 check ins to Olympic venues during the Olympic Games on Facebook. About 10% of that number on Foursquare.
— Alex Balfour (@AlexBalfour2012) September 2, 2012

Note - Alex Balfour is Head of New Media, London Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012

Cadbury's Olympic sponsorship helped it add more than 260,000 new fans & followers over the Olympic period

"The Kraft-owned chocolate brand, which is a sponsor of both the London Olympics and Paralympics, has been highly active in its marketing activity around the Olympics.
Its initial above-the-line activity, its Spots and Stripes campaign, was criticised in some quarters for failing to engage customers.
However, Kraft claims its social media activity has been a success. It claims to have added 2.5 million fans and followers to its UK social media channels on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, which are dedicated to the Games content, since the start of the year.
The combined social media channels, which now have a reach of 7.5 million, experienced sharp growth over the 17 days of the Olympic Games.
The steepest growth was on its @CadburyUK Twitter account, which added 25,000 followers over the course of the event, taking it to a total of 75,000.
Its CadburyUK Facebook Page, which has 245,000 fans, lifted 20% during the 17-day period, adding 35,000 followers.
Its Google+ page gained 200,000 new fans during the Games, which saw it break through the two million fans mark.
Cadbury claims this growth on Twitter is partly organic, through having engaging conversations with consumers, but also using paid-for products throughout the Games helped it achieve greater scale."

Source:  Marketing Week, 27th August 2012

80% of mobile page views relating to the Olympics were from apps

"During the Olympic Games, it was apps that consumers turned to for their sporting content, not the mobile web. That's according to information firm Nielsen, which tracked usage of LOCOG's two main iOS and Android apps, Join In and Results, among a panel of 1,400 nationally representative smartphone users during the Games.
80 per cent of all mobile pageviews relating to the Games can be attributed to apps, and that number jumps significantly in terms of time spent - apps accounted for 96 per cent of all time spent using a London 2012 mobile property."

Source:  Nielsen data, reported by Mobile Marketing, 20th August 2012

Note - I'm assuming this is US only, although it doesn't explicitly say so

Stats from the official London 2012 sites and digital channels

London 2012.com olympic games digital round up 13 august 2012 from Alex Balfour

Brand and publisher success from the London 2012 Olympic Games

"Brands who invest in digital marketing to connect with customers grow their own businesses and help make great content possible. A few campaigns that caught our eye:
Visa’s global “Go World" campaign invited fans to show their support for Team Visa athletes in the form of cheers across social media. The campaign generated more than 59 million cheers, and Visa’s YouTube channel accounted for more than 47 million views of Visa’s commercials and athlete training videos from around the world.
Insurance provider Zurich launched a successful “Share your Sports Moments” marketing campaign on Google and YouTube, featuring members of the German Olympic team. The result: a significant uplift in the number of leads who then signed insurance contracts.
Lloyds TSB Bank, presenting partner of the Olympic Torch relay, conducted a successful AdWords campaign that kept pace with the Olympic torch as it passed through towns in the U.K., resulting in more than 190,000 clicks and more than 2 million impressions over three months.

Higher traffic and increased investment in the web also helped online publishers in a big way:
In the U.S., across 2 million sites in our Google Display Network and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, ads shown on sports-related websites increased by 19 percent, while revenues (RPMs) for these sites increased by 14 percent, compared to the two previous weeks.
Our premium ad serving platform for publishers (DoubleClick for Publishers), which helps some of the web’s largest publishers make money from their content, broke a new record, with one major publisher serving more than 400 million ad impressions in a day across its website and mobile content—driving higher revenues and more free content."

Source:  Blog post by Google, 14th August 2012

52 million people in the UK saw at least 15 minutes of BBC TV's Olympic coverage

"The BBC's Olympics coverage was watched by 90% of the UK population, delivering what BBC1 controller Danny Cohen described as the "largest TV audiences since the pre-digital age".
A total of 51.9 million people watched at least 15 minutes of the London games on BBC TV, which offered blanket coverage of the Olympics on BBC1 and BBC3 and 24 dedicated Olympics channels on satellite, cable and online.
The corporation said 24.2 million people (42% of the UK population) watched at least 15 minutes of the games via the BBC red button.
The top 10 Olympics events all had peak audiences of more than 12 million viewers.
Cohen said: "The fact that Team GB did so well created a huge public interest and momentum.
"It's been a real breakthrough moment for the BBC in terms of digital and our relationship with audiences in a digital environment.
"I doubt there has been a sustained period since the mid-1990s when we have had such consistently large audiences, the largest since the pre-digital age."
[...]
Initial BBC figures suggested the closing ceremony, which had an average audience of 23.2 million viewers, was watched by even more people than Danny Boyle's opening ceremony, which had an original overnight rating of just over 23 million.
But on Monday, the day after the games finished, the corporation gave a belated boost to the audience for Boyle's opening spectacular, and said it was actually watched by an average of 23.4 million viewers when viewing on digital channels and BBC News was taken into account. The BBC also upped its peak audience from 26.9 million to 27.3 million.
The BBC said the London Games was the "biggest national television event" since current Barb methodology was introduced in 2002.
Reaching 90% of the population, it eclipsed the 81% of the population who watched at least 15 minutes of the 2002 football World Cup, the 69% who watched the BBC's coverage of the Queen's diamond jubilee earlier this year and the 61% who saw last year's royal wedding."

Source:  The Guardian, 13th August 2012

Note - Clearly it's not all that helpful to compare aggregate viewing figures for a 16 day event with a single football match or a Royal Wedding...

The BBC Sport websites received 55 million visits during the Olympic Games

"BBC Sport online registered a record 55 million visits from devices around the world during the Olympic Games.
Some 37 million were from within the UK, the BBC said. The figure includes both mobile and computer access.
The peak traffic moment was on 1 August, when cyclist Bradley Wiggins won his gold medal in the men's time trial.
But 3 August - the start of the women's heptathlon featuring Jessica Ennis - was the busiest day as a whole.
There were also 106 million requests for online video during the games .
This was up from 32 million during the Beijing Olympics.
Nearly two million people downloaded the BBC's Olympics smartphone app on both Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms.
"Our aspiration was that just as the Coronation did for TV in 1953, the Olympics would do for digital in 2012," said Phil Fearnley, General Manager, News and Knowledge, BBC Future Media."

Source:  BBC News, 13th August 2012

More than 150 million Olympic-related Tweets were posted in 16 days

"We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation.
The biggest moments of competition, as measured by Tweets per minute, were:
-Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt) of Jamaica wins gold in the 200m sprint: 80,000+ TPM
-Bolt wins gold in the 100m sprint: 74,000+ TPM
-Andy Murray (@andy_murray) of Great Britain wins gold in the men’s tennis singles: 57,000+ TPM
-Jamaica wins gold and sets the world record in the men’s 4x100 relay: 52,000+ TPM
-Team USA beats Spain to win gold in men’s basketball: 41,000+ TPM
The biggest tweeting moments that came during the heat of competition (not at a medal-winning conclusion) included Kobe Bryant’s dunk towards the end of the USA-Spain basketball game, and Hope Solo’s (@HopeSolo) land-diving save in the women’s USA-Japan soccer match.
In addition to inspiring the biggest conversation spike with his 200m win, Usain Bolt also took home the record for being the most discussed athlete of the Games. But he had company — nine other Olympians garnered more than 1 million Tweets each:
1.Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt)
2. Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps)
3. Tom Daley (@TomDaley1994)
4. Ryan Lochte (@ryanlochte)
5. Gabby Douglas (@gabrielledoug)
6. Andy Murray (@andy_murray)
7. Kobe Bryant (#GetKobeOnTwitter)
8. Yohan Blake (@YohanBlake)
9. Lee Chong Wei (@Lee_C_Wei)
10. LeBron James (@KingJames)"
Source:  Blog post from Twitter, 12th August 2012

Traffic to the BBC website on key days of the Olympics exceeded all the traffic for World Cup 2010

"The BBC's promise was to deliver coverage of every sport from every venue, and we certainly achieved this with our digital coverage: from the blue ribbon events like the 100m final all the way to the first taekwondo heats, the multi-faceted entirety of the Olympics was available to watch throughout the day across online and Red Button.
Overall, this comprehensive coverage drove very large amounts of traffic to the Sport website and to Red Button channels.
BBC Red Button - BARB reach (people aged 4+), with threshold "watched 15 consecutive minutes or more" - in line with BBC TV channel standard metric. Cookie churn means the BBC Online figures will include some unavoidable duplication over this period.
And the peak audiences for Team GB's medal moments were bigger than anything we've ever seen. Over a 24 hour period on the busiest Olympic days, Olympic traffic to bbc.co.uk exceeded that for the entire BBC coverage of FIFA World Cup 2010 games. On the busiest day, the BBC delivered 2.8 petabytes, with the peak traffic moment occurring when Bradley Wiggins won Gold and we shifted 700 Gb/s.
BBC Sport Online's most requested live video stream was of the Tennis Singles Finals, where Andy Murray and Serena Williams were victorious."

Source:  Blog post by the BBC, 13th August 2012

Note - Click on the link to see the top 10 events

The Women's Football Final between USA & Japan was the most streamed event in Olympic history

"1.467 Million Video Streams for Team USA-Japan is Most-Streamed Event in Olympic History
More Than 210 Million Total Viewers for the London Olympics, Surpassed Total Viewership for Atlanta for 2nd Most-Watched Event in U.S. Television History
31.9 Million Average Viewership and 18.0 Household Rating for the First 14 Nights of the London Olympics is Most for any Non-U.S. Summer Olympics in 36 Years
22.9 Million Viewers in Primetime Last Night; 13th Time in 14 Nights that Primetime Viewership Topped Comparable Nights from the 2008 Beijing Olympics"

Source:  Press release from NBC, 10th August 2012

The vast majority of Americans who are following the Olympics are doing so on TV

"Large majorities of Americans are following coverage of the Olympic Games in London. Nearly eight-in-ten (78%) say they have watched or followed Olympic coverage either on television, online or on social networks.
Television remains far-and-away the leading platform for Olympic coverage; 73% say they have watched coverage on television. Still, 17% say they have watched online or digitally and 12% report they have followed Olympic coverage on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. Most Olympic followers (68%) say they are watching events in the evening after they have already occurred. At the same time, almost a quarter (23%) say they are watching live during the day.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, conducted August 2-5, 2012 among 1,005 adults, finds that NBC’s coverage of the Olympics receives high marks from the public."
Source:  Research by Pew Internet & American Life Project, 6th August 2012

119m Olympics-related 'Tweets' were made on Sina Weibo during the 2012 opening ceremony

"While much has been made about this being the 'Twitter Olympics,' it should be noted that China has its own version called Sina Weibo (meaning "microblog" in Chinese) that is making a strong case to call this the "Weibo Olympics" as well.
While Twitter counted almost 10 million tweets during the Olympic opening ceremony, which was more than during the whole of the Beijing games, Sina Weibo counted 119 million opening ceremony tweets. What makes these numbers even more impressive is that Twitter has half the users of Twitter, but generated over 10 times the number of comments, writes Sam Flemming, Shanghai-based president and founder of social business intelligence provider CIC."

Source:  AdAge, 8th August 2012

Live video streams of the Olympics are >300% higher in 2012 than in 2008

"With the Olympics halfway over, NBC has begun to release the success of their digital properties, which includes live streaming of all the games on their iPad apps. The web changed completely between 2008 and 2012, enabling a more social Olympics who’s coverage can be found way beyond the TV screen. Here are details on the NBC Olympics digital success.
The results are in for NBC’s digital footprint for the Olympics. Here are the main stats:
75 Million Total Videos Streamed, Up 182% vs. Beijing in 2008
34 Million Live Streams, Up 333% vs. Beijing
744 Million Page Views, Up 160 Million from Beijing
NBC Olympics Live Extra & NBC Olympics apps Peaked at No. 1 & 2 as Top Free Apps for iPhone & iPad on App Store
6.2 Million Devices Verified by Cable, Satellite and Telco Customers
Regarding NBCOlympics.com’s mobile website, the total unique viewers for the 2008 games were 2.8 million and for London 2012 there have already been 5.2 million, proving smartphone penetration. The NBC Live app has already had 7 million unique users and the NBC Olympics app has had 2.7 million."

Source:  LostRemote, 5th August 2012
Earlier - Live streams of the Beijing opening ceremony were 10x higher than for the Athens ceremony

Olympic sponsorship and advertising has driven adidas' sales in the UK

"Olympic sponsor Adidas has hailed its biggest ever UK marketing campaign ‘Take the Stage’ for lifting sales of London 2012-related merchandise to around around £100m.
It means that the sports manufacturer has already recouped its £100m investment in sponsoring the Games, with further sales expected.
The ‘Take the Stage’ campaign launched earlier this year and has featured British athletes and celebrities including heptathlete Jessica Ennis, footballer David Beckham and comedian Keith Lemmon."

Source:  Marketing Week, 3rd August 2012

Usain Bolt's 100m final generated 1,233 Tweets per Second

New peak in #Olympics conversation: 74k TPM about @usainbolt winning the 100m yesterday.
— Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) August 6, 2012

Note - this works out at approx 1,233 Tweets per Second (tps), far below the 15,358 tps for the final goal of Euro 2012

Update - slightly higher for the 200m final:

Record alert! @usainbolt sets a new Olympic Games conversation record with over 80,000 TPM for his 200m victory. #Olympics
— Twitter (@twitter) August 9, 2012

Mobile Search and the Olympic Games

Google have looked at some stats across the world, combining tablet and mobile to create this chart.

Click to enlarge

Source:  Google Mobile blog, 6th August 2012
Note - lots more background at the original link