Viewership for the Opening Ceremony also impressed north of the border. In Canada, the figure also marked an all-time record for a Summer Games, even as the event was simulcast on multiple
platforms.
Friday’s ceremony delivered an average of 6.4 million viewers, nearly 50% higher than the previous record for Atlanta in 1996. The event aired live in the afternoon
across Canada on CTV and multiple other networks that are part of a broadcast consortium.
It was also simulcast online and accessible via mobile TV. Streaming figures are not
available, so it is impossible to get a bead on how many TV viewers could have been lost because of the live streaming.
NBC instead opted to air the event on tape delay in prime time
and did not make it available live online, a source of some controversy. U.S. viewership of 40.7 million was the highest for any Opening Ceremony on record for a Summer Games.
In
Canada, the ceremony aired in the Eastern time zone from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The London opener’s 6.4 million viewers topped the Beijing kickoff’s 1.6 million. That was far more than
NBC’s impressive 17% gain over Beijing.
The Canadian 6.4 million is an aggregate average number for broadcasts in six languages, including French, Tamil and Punjabi. Nearly one
in every two Canadians watched some part of the London opener, according to the Olympic broadcast consortium.
While it delivered the highest viewership for a Summer Games tipoff
event, viewership paled beside the 13.5 million for the home-country Vancouver event in 2010.
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