Data: Olympic viewing up 7x on YouTube
August 16, 2021
Seven times the amount of hours of Olympic Games content were watched on YouTube during Tokyo 2020 compared with Rio 2016, according to a Blog post from the video-sharing site.
“We worked with broadcasters around the world to deliver the most comprehensive viewing experience, including live streams of opening and closing ceremonies, clips of memorable moments, highlights of all the action across the 33 Olympic sports, and athlete content straight from Tokyo,” says YouTube, noting that its users responded in a “huge” way.
“During Tokyo 20201, YouTube viewers watched over 200 million hours of Olympic Games content (counting historic Olympic Games and Tokyo) on YouTube,” it reports. “That’s seven times the amount of hours of Olympic Games content watched on YouTube during Rio 20162. We also saw that Games content was viewed more than 190 million times per day during Tokyo, five times more than the average daily views of Olympic Games content on YouTube during Rio 2016,” it adds.
“From beginning to end, YouTube remained an important place for fans to find community and catch up on the incredible sporting moments. In just two weeks, the Olympic YouTube Channel alone grew from 6 million subscribers to 7.9 million subscribers,” advises YouTube.
British Gold Medal Diver Tom Daley (1.13 million subscribers) surpassed 4.3 million views with his #DaleyDiaries – giving his fans a behind-the-scenes tour of the full Olympic journey with exclusive access to the Olympic Village.
Daley’s good friend Rommel Pacheco had a total of 1 million views during the Games including training and how-to content, with 14 per cent of his traffic coming from Shorts.
McKayla Skinner from the USA Gymnastics team gave an honest, intimate look into the stresses and strains of competing in the Olympic Games.
“And on YouTube TV in the US., we introduced new, innovative features that helped our members connect more deeply with their favourite sports across the networks of NBCUniversal – from comprehensive search and DVR capabilities letting you catch all the events you wanted to watch, to our new 4K Plus add-on package that delivered the Games in crisp, high-quality resolution. We even introduced a medal counter to see how each country was stacking up,” it notes.