Interactive Olympics Draws Millions To BBC
New research indicates that the massive interactive coverage afforded to this year’s Olympic Games by the BBC has paid off, as the Corporation celebrates record audiences and unprecedented usage of its services.
The BBC’s figures show that nearly nine million digital satellite viewers pressed the red button on their remote controls, accessing the BBC’s interactive services to achieve the highest reaching service since Wimbledon 2004.
The audience figures also reveal that 83% of those accessing the BBC’s interactive service did so for more than three minutes, while 61% were still interacting 15 minutes into the service, and 51% stayed tuned for over 25 minutes.
The massive ratings underline similar research released by the BBC at the beginning of the Olympics. Audience figures taken just over one week into the event showed that six million viewers had accessed the services for more than one minute, while a staggering 50% of the available audience had chosen to interact with the Olympic programming (see BBC Scores Record Interactive Audiences With Olympics).
The BBC’s broadband coverage of the Olympics, including both live and edited coverage, attracted an estimated 2.8m requests for streaming video, while the Corporation’s Olympics site itself attracted 5.7m users during the games. The BBC’s Sport and Sport Academy websites also registered high usage, notching up their biggest ever number of weekly page impressions.
Commenting on the success of the BBC’s coverage, Andrew Thompson, BBC Sport’s head of new media, sports news and development, said: “This was the first ever truly interactive Olympics; a model for multi-media working at the BBC in the future. The interactive services give our audiences exactly what they wanted across the web and interactive TV: extra choice about what events they watch, when and how they watched them.”
He added: “These astonishing figures are a tribute to the production and technical teams who worked so effectively together across all media to deliver a fantastic choice of compelling content.”
Research from web-statistics firm Hitwise recently revealed that UK visits to Olympic websites surged ahead in the final week of the Games, as Britain’s medal tally continued to rise. According to the findings, 21 August saw the biggest increase in web traffic, as Team GB scored a record-breaking five gold medals, two silvers and three bronzes in a move that prompted hordes of sports fans to go online for the latest Olympic news (see British Olympic Success Drives Sports Fans Online).
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