It’s been an impressive weekend for the BBC as the broadcaster provided coverage of the Olympic opening ceremony and competitions.
On the BBC Internet blog today, Cait O’Riordon, Head of Product for Sport and 2012 at the BBC writes about record-breaking digital viewer stats.
As you many remember, the BBC had big plans for its live broadcast and streaming coverage. All encoders were in action across desktop, mobile, tablet, connected TV and Red Button services. It must have been a little nerve-wracking to wind that all up, but it certainly paid off for keeping viewers happy.
7.8m global browsers headed for bbc.co.uk/sport on Saturday with 5.6m million UK browsers – a global record. On Sunday both global and UK records were broken as 8.3m global and 6.1m UK browsers were logged at the same site.
The work in creating the BBC Sport Olympic app clearly also paid off as it was saw 1.15m downloads. In fact, 55% of browsers came from non-desktop services on Saturday according to O’Riordon, proof if ever we needed it that digital viewers are keen on more than one screen.
The BBC iPlayer, now a standard in streaming video online saw 1.7m requests for the Olympic opening ceremony, with 925k on Saturday alone. It’s a new record for a single day for the BBC and a testament to the resilience of its service online.
Sharing material out to third-party sites also seems to be working for the broadcaster. The James Bond Escorts The Queen to the London 2012 Olympic Games clip has been viewed 640k+ times on the BBC’s YouTube channel.
Congratulations to the BBC. For the investment it takes in securing coverage of Olympic events and the work that goes into planning and executing digital coverage in ways an audience can access across the board, it appears that it is worth the work to ensure reputation and viewer stats on the Internet. Probably worth at least one US broadcaster taking note.
Image Credit: Dullhunk
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