Preliminary data for TV viewing patterns for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver has revealed that mobile viewing has reached record highs for any Olympics.
According to the Nielsen Company, analysing trends on behalf of NBC who gained sole rights to the games for US audiences, NBCUs Sunday Olympic broadcasts were seen by 87 million total viewers, the most viewers for any day so far for the Vancouver Games, 16 million more and 22% higher than the comparable Sunday from the 2006 Games.
As part of this upward trend, NBC reported a surge in viewing for its mobile platform. In just ten days, NBC reported that its Olympics Mobile platforms (WAP site and iTunes App) amassed more than 54.3 million page views, surpassing the total number of page views for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (34.7 million) by 56%.
NBC served 1.3 million mobile video streams in these 10 days, more than four times the total number for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (301,000). By the time the Opening Ceremony broadcast started on 12 February, NBCs Olympics Mobile had already generated more page views than the entire 2006 Winter Games (1.07 million).
Overall in this time NBCOlympics.com delivered 26.2 million online video streams to date, nearly 22 million more and 471% higher than the first ten days of the last winter games in Turin (4.6 million).