The Rio Olympics may have delivered fewer medals than expected but it was a big winner for RTÉ in a digital sense.
While the full suite of numbers covering television have yet to be published, the digital results are in and show a massive return for the broadcaster.
Traffic to RTÉ’s online and mobile services on RTÉ.ie and RTÉ News Now hit 15 million impressions and two million unique browsers over the course of the two weeks, almost double that which had been the case for the Euro 2016 finals earlier in the summer.
Streams
RTÉ Player also delivered a high volume of streams, serving over 1.4 million streams for Olympic coverage, with over 78% of the streams being live.
In part this can be attributed to some of the biggest occasions such as Michael Conlon’s and Katie Taylor’s defeats taking place outside of prime time
RTÉ Sport and RTÉ News coverage of both of those, Annalise Murphy and the O’Donovan brother’s silver medal wins and the ensuing controversies concerning Pat Hickey and the OCI ticketing scandal, resulted in the highest surges in traffic across RTÉ’s online and mobile services.
Viral
The O’Donovan brothers also proved to be the viral hit of RTÉ Sport’s Olympic coverage, with RTÉ’s post win interviews with Gary and Paul O’Donovan attracting over 10 million social media views.
The day of Michael Conlan’s boxing match and Annalise Murphy’s silver medal win on the 16th August drew the largest overall peak in online traffic, with 1.8 million page views to Rio 2016 content across RTÉ.ie and RTÉ News Now app.
On this day, RTÉ Player also served 135,000 streams, of which 100,000 streams were live.
Impressions
An article on Michael Conlan’s controversial defeat ‘Crushed Michael Conlan latest victim of Rio judging farce’ proved to be the biggest story of the Olympics and one of the biggest stories of the year to date, attracting 760,000 page impressions. It is currently the third most popular story across RTÉ.ie and RTÉ News Now app this year.
An interactive online game created by RTÉ’s digital productions and operations team, which highlighted the controversial outcome of Michael Conlon fight against Vladimir Nikitin, also proved to be hit, attracting close to half a million page impressions.
The second heaviest day for online traffic during the Olympics, with over 1.3 million page views across RTÉ.ie and RTÉ News Now app, was the 15th August, the day of Katie Taylor’s shock defeat. Traffic to RTÉ Player also peaked that day with close to 130,000 streams.
The day of Gary and Paul O’Donovan’s silver win in the men’s lightweight sculls, attracted record audiences and delivered the third highest peak in traffic to RTÉ’s online and mobile services, with over 1.2 million page impressions across RTÉ.ie and RTÉ News Now.
That day also saw peak traffic to RTÉ Player with 164,000 streams that day, of which 132,000 streams were live.
Mobile
Of the online traffic to RTÉ.ie and RTÉ News Now for the Olympics, 79% of traffic was from mobile devices (smartphone/ tablet) and 75% of traffic was domestic, while 22% was international.
On RTÉ Player more than half of all streams were viewed on a mobile or tablet.
“RTÉ’s online and mobile services are an integral part of the experience of major national and sporting events and this is reflected in the increasing high volume of online users coming to RTÉ’s portfolio of digital services for RTÉ News and RTÉ Sports coverage,” said Muirne Laffan, RTÉ’s Chief Digital Officer.
“RTÉ Sport’s Olympics coverage online, revealed some interesting emerging trends, with a significant increase in live and mobile viewing.”
