The Olympic Games are well and truly under way and while the number of medals will be the most important and lasting metric for most we are also looking at the business numbers and some of those have been very contradictory over the opening weekend.
The biggest TV market for the Games is the US and NBC are the long term incumbent broadcaster both spending and making eye watering amounts on bringing the moments that matter to the US audience.
They came in for huge criticism in 2012 for showing may events on tape delay to account for the time difference. With Rio in a much more ‘viewer friendly’ zone it was expected that would change, taking account of the ‘always on’ digital age but no, there was still a time delay on the Opening Ceremony and that seems to have had a big hit on viewers.
In fact viewing for Friday night’s ceremony was down a worrying 35% on 2012 and that trend continued through Saturday’s first night of competition when the numbers were 28% lower than four years ago.
Ad revenues were ironically moving in the opposite direction though, perhaps because of the increasing rarity of events other than sport to capture a mass audience even if that is lower now in absolute numbers.
In fact NBC has already secured 20% more in advertising revenue than it did through the whole of the London games. That amounts to a staggering €1.1 billion.
Nobody is forcing advertisers into the slots so it is obviously still providing a significant return on investment.
Sport for Business’ Coverage of the 2016 Olympic Games is supported by Team Ireland Official Partner Electric Ireland #ThePowerWithin
