The Olympic Games that is. Over the past 12 days, billions (that’s right, billions, with a B) of people from around the globe have watched the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. As with every Olympic Games, we’ve seen victory, defeat, heartbreak, and scandal. What’s different about the Vancouver Games is the way we’ve watched them. This year’s Games have been watched through more types of media than ever before. And at Boston Interactive, we’re fascinated by how users access media and how the interactive world can extend beyond our computer screens and into our TVs, phones, iPods, Kindles, microwaves, electric toothbrushes, etc. So I couldn’t help but investigate how people around the world are watching the Games.
While television is the usual medium for watching the Olympics, the way viewers are watching the Vancouver Games on television is different and more interactive than any Games before. Domestically, over half of those who have logged onto NBCOlympics.com have watched the games on television at the same time, and 50% of mobile NBC visitors have watched content via TV and their phones simultaneously. And that’s just viewers accessing NBC’s site. Just imagine how many are using social media to view athletes’ Facebook pages, follow them on Twitter, and check out the Olympic village via Google Earth while watching the Games on television. And if you think all this multitasking is causing viewers to pay less attention to ads, you’ve guessed wrong. Brand recall, message recall, and ad likeability are all up during the Olympics, according to NBC.
Select viewers are even able to access interactive content without leaving their television screens. Verizon Fios, in an agreement with NBC Universal is delivering its customers access to an on-screen interactive application with real-time medal counts, athlete bios, team USA reports, and Olympic news.
This pattern of increasing digital viewership is holding up across the world, according to the International Olympic Committee. “We’ve had a continuing digital explosion,” says Timo Lumme, Managing Director of TV and Marketing Services for the IOC. “We now have the same amount of hours covered globally on digital media — internet, mobile — as we have on the old media broadcasting, and a quarter of that is mobile.”
The Olympics naturally lend themselves to online and mobile viewership, because the events are rarely broadcast live on television, driving many to seek out live streaming online. And NBC has been wise enough to embrace this trend, which will undoubtedly continue in future Games. “Multiplatform consumption is emerging and it’s going to become extraordinarily important,” says Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development for NBC Universal. “The more platforms you used, the more engaged you become.”
While I’d love to go on and on about the incredible synergy of television, online, and mobile media and the Olympics, I’d be neglecting an important issue if I failed to mention the lack of profits NBC is generating from the Games. The network paid $2.2 billion for the exclusive rights to air the Games in the United States and has stated that they will lose money on the venture. We can only speculate about how this will affect future Olympic bids and what will happen if the IOC is forced to operate on a tighter budget. I wonder how interactive offerings could generate more revenue for networks in the future.
But that’s a story for the 2012 Games. Today, I’d love to hear how you’ve been watching the Vancouver Olympics and how you expect interactive, broadcast, and mobile access to the Games’ content to evolve.
