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Canadians Break Digital Viewership Record with 2010 Olympics: CTV

February 24, 2010

(OLYMPICS TECHNOLOGY)
Canadians like me, watching our athletes and others from around the world achieving excellence at venues in Vancouver, Richmond, Cypress and Whistler are responsible for breaking Olympic and digital viewership records.
 
By the end of Day 10, CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca reports that they have served more than 110.6 million total page views, more than twice as many as Beijing Summer Olympics 2008. Meanwhile, each day of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games has seen an average of 11 million page views. This is four times the pre-Games record of 2.6 million page views on the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium sites set in December, 2009 when Team Canada Men’s Hockey Team was announced.


In addition, online audiences have taken in 8.4 million live events, and watched 9.2 million on demand videos, for a total of 17.6 million videos viewed. These numbers are already more than three times those reported for Beijing 2008 (4.9 million), and in the case of on demand viewing, the sites have served up five times the number of streams.
 
With the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games in full swing, audiences are turning to the Consortium’s web portals to get news, videos, instant results and athlete information about the biggest event ever held on Canadian soil. The numbers represent, says CTV, “new benchmarks for online video consumption of both live and on demand events in Canada.”
 
Expect new records in just a few hours from now when Canada takes on Russia in the men’s hockey quarter-finals after beating Germany yesterday: which I watched part of from my PC.
 
Here are just some of the stats:
 
*          Unique Visitors. Since the beginning of the Games, the sites have provided information for 7.9 million unique visitors. There are 9,730 hours of content available on the sites, so far

*          Digital Video. 17.6 million videos have been watched online at Consortium sites. Additionally, 2.1 million videos have been seen on CTV’s Olympic-branded YouTube (News - Alert) Channel. In total, 3.3 million hours of video have been watched through the video players on for CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca
 
*          Live events are proving popular during the Games with 47 percent of all video views happening during live event coverage

*          On average, video viewers on the site watch 51 minutes of online Olympic coverage daily

*          Top on demand videos on the site are: No. 1: Tragedy at Luge Trac; No. 2 Alexandre Bilodeau - Gold Medal Run; No. 3 Jon Montgomery, Gold Medal Run; No. 4 Women’s Hockey, Highlights from Canada vs. Sweden; and No. 5 The Romance of the Winter Games.
 
*          Other video content that has resonated with visitors and created buzz through social media are: It’s Our Game with Michael J. Fox, with more than 40,000 video views, The Superbodies series, with nearly 39,000 views and Stephen Brunt’s video essay What These Games Mean to Canada, with more than 8,000 views

*          Audiences are increasingly engaged with online offerings through live blogs and social media. More than half a million interactions through in-event live blogs on the sites. More than 10,000 interactions on the CTV Olympics Facebook (News - Alert) fan page. Thousands of interactions on the @CTVOlympics and @RDSolympiques Twitter accounts. Over 417,000 referrals to CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca from tracked social media sources, 178,000 votes cast through online polls.

*          Top Online Destinations. With more than 100 million page views, the following destinations have been the most popular with viewers:
 
Top Sports: No. 1 Hockey, No. 2 Figure Skating, No. 3 Curling, No. 4 Snowboard, No. 5 Long Track Speed Skating; Top Athletes: No. 1 Kevin Martin, No. 2 Cheryl Bernard, No. 3 Alexandre Bilodeau, No. 4 Johnny Weir, No. 5 Joannie Rochette; Top Pages outside of the sites’ home pages: No. 1 Video Homepage, No. 2 CTV Live Stream Homepage, No. 3 Viewers’ Guide, presented by Bell, No. 4 Hockey Homepage, No. 5 Results and Schedules Homepage.

*          Mobile. The CTV Olympics and RDS olympiques mobile apps have been downloaded 209,000 times.

For context, last year TSN.ca streamed 1.4 million audio and video streams in one day as TradeCentre 09 set a new benchmark for online sports coverage in Canada. For Vancouver 2010, CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca have served up more live and on demand streams each day with only one exception, with the highest day of online viewing so far coming on Day 10, with more than 2.1 million videos streamed.
 
“We’re seeing an incredible adoption rate of live-event online video,” said Alon Marcovici, vice president of Digital Media and Research, Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium. “The number of people watching online and the interaction we’re having with our audience has exceeded our expectations. We’re finding that with a high-quality broadcast-like experience, viewers will watch live events online in massive numbers.”

Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Erin Harrison