• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 8, 2008

With the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics kicking off today, mobile users will be busy over the next two weeks watching their favorite events and tracking medal counts.

Almost 45% of U.S. mobile video users and 31% of those in the U.K. will be part of the mobile audience for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, according to new data from Nielsen Mobile. The media ratings firm described the Olympics as a "watershed moment" for mobile media.

"In general, the event-driven and around-the-clock nature of the Olympics make the next few weeks a really important testing ground for the state of mobile media," said Nicholas Covey, director of insights for Nielsen Mobile.

The top events that U.S. mobile users want to watch on their phones include gymnastics (61.7%), swimming and diving (58.5%) and track and field (54.5%). For their U.K. counterparts, track and field (89.9%), boxing (59.1%) and gymnastics (53.7%) were the most anticipated Olympic sports.

"Consumers are especially looking forward to the high-profile, short events such as track and field and gymnastics on their phone," said Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen Mobile, in a statement. "Longer team sports, such as soccer and volleyball, are less conducive to mobile viewing, but mobile users will still follow the scores closely on their devices."

When it comes to types of Olympic-related content, event results were the top category in both the U.S. and the U.K, followed by medal counts and checking the TV schedule in the U.S., and reading articles and medal counts in the U.K.

The mobile Internet will also play a key role, with 23% of mobile Web users tracking the Olympics via phone browsers and 17% of U.K. subscribers.

NBC has prepared for the mobile masses with a range of Olympics-related initiatives for the on-the-go audience. The network's Olympics mobile site will offer news alerts and highlights as well as video, slideshow galleries and polls.

Separately, AT&T Wireless will offer NBC Olympics 2Go, a mobile TV channel with live event coverage from NBC, the USA Network, MSNBC and CNBC. NBC has also made Olympics content available through Verizon Wireless, Alltel, Helio, T-Mobile USA, and MobiTV.

Users may also be able to download content to handheld devices via Amazon.com and Microsoft's Zune digital media player and online store.

Nielsen estimates that 15% of the U.S. wireless customers use the mobile Web and 2% watch mobile video on a regular basis.

"A lot of subscribers tell us they want the ability to follow along on their phone, and NBC has done a great job partnering with leading carriers to make it possible," said Covey. "But we'll see whether promotion has been sufficient to drive subscribers to actually tune in."

Along with its Total Audience Measurement Index--created to rate audiences for Olympic programming across media including TV and the Internet--NBC will also gather mobile data based on the tracking of 40 users' Olympic-related cell phone video viewership, according to a Lehman Brothers report on Olympic media and advertising.