The Olympics have only been going for a few days now, but the reported number of viewers and visitors to the Games’ main site are staggering. I could try to paraphrase the information from Sports Business Daily, but I might as well just pass along the words it e-mailed on Sunday:
Through two nights of Olympic coverage, NBC is averaging a 16.2/30 primetime fast national Nielsen rating, up 22% from Athens in ‘04 (13.3/25).
NBC’s Beijing Games coverage is on pace to be the most-watched Olympics in history, as through two days, NBCU’s family of networks has attracted a record 114 million total viewers. That is four million more than Atlanta in ‘96, which was the most-watched Olympics in history, and nearly 20 million more than Athens (95 million).
Through two days, NBCOlympics.com has totaled 132.6 million page views compared to 17.9 million page views for the first two days of the Athens Games, an increase of 641%.
We’ll see where things go from this point, but with the increase in features being offered, the constant growth in Web surfers and at least a couple of compelling and quite well-covered American storylines (Michael Phelps’ pool dominance and the men’s basketball team’s attempt at redemption) bode well for the continuation of strong consumer numbers.
