Commentary

Rio Pulls Off Mostly Positive Olympics Feedback

The 2016 Summer Olympics are officially behind us, but the critiquing of anything remotely related to the games has just begun.

 

Remarkably -- considering all the bad press leading up to it -- people had mostly good things to say about the XXXI Olympiad. In fact, about 81% of all social mentions were positive, according to fresh findings from Brandwatch.

That figure is based on an analysis of roughly 23 million mentions of Rio 2016 on the social Web from August 5 through August 21.

Among media types, another big story to come out of the games was the rise of video streaming, which occurred at the expense of TV viewership. As such, “Look for brands and sponsors to take tech more seriously as the streaming audience continues to grow,” according to a Brandwatch spokeswoman.

While content mediums continue to evolve, the same messages got through to consumers.

Coca-Cola was the unofficial brand winner of Rio 2016 with 12,000 social mentions, followed by McDonald's with over 11,700 mentions, and Visa with over 8,200 mentions. Samsung also did pretty well with over 6,200 mentions, along with watch maker Omega with over 4,300 mentions.

As for the actual games, badminton won with 11% of all event-related mentions, followed by soccer and gymnastics with 10% a piece, and swimming with a 9% share.

Among individual athletes, Usain Bolt scored 25% of athlete-centric mentions, Michael Phelps was close behind with 24% of mentions, while Simone Biles came in third with 11% of such mentions.

Next story loading loading..