YouTube's Tokyo Olympics Viewing Up 7X Vs. Rio Games

While Tokyo Olympics viewership on NBCUniversal networks was down 42% compared to the 2016 Rio games, YouTube users watched more than 200 million hours of the Tokyo games — up seven times versus Rio, according to the video giant.

YouTube Olympics content was viewed more than 190 million times per day during Tokyo, five times more than the average daily views for YouTube’s content during the Rio games.

Over the two weeks, the Olympic YouTube Channel alone grew from 6 million to 7.9 million subscribers,

YouTube noted that British gold medal diver Tom Daley, with 1.13M subscribers, surpassed 4.3 million views with his #DaleyDiaries (above); that Rommel Pachero drew 1 million views during the games; and that McKayla Skinner of the USA Gymnastics team drew viewers with her "honest, intimate look into the stresses and strains of competing in the Olympic Games." 

“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,” and viewers responded in a “huge” way, the platform boasted.

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In preparation for Tokyo, YouTube launched features inclulding a medal tracker, the ability to jump to specific sports moments within a DVR recording, and new ways to search for sports moments within its DVR libraries, notes Tubefilter.

 

3 comments about "YouTube's Tokyo Olympics Viewing Up 7X Vs. Rio Games".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 16, 2021 at 11:51 a.m.

    Wonderful. But how about putting these numbers in a perspective that most of us can understand. For example, what was the average minute time-on-screen figure for YoyTube for the Olympics? Was it 250,000 or 365,000 or 529,000? Or what? The daily figure of "190 million times" doesn't really tell me much. Nor does the "200 million hours" claim for the entire Olympics help. By the way, how do we know whether the users were actually present and "watching" the games, ceremonies, commercials, etc. anyway?

  2. John Grono from GAP Research, August 16, 2021 at 7:12 p.m.

    Can we also assume that 200 million hours is global?.   And can we also assume that is the cumulative duration across the 17 days of the Olympics?

    Some simple maths may help to provide the much needed perspective that Ed speaks about.


    • 200 million hours over 17 days is an average of just under 12 million hours per day (11,764,706 hrs). 

    • The global population is 7.8 billion

    • The per capita daily average Olympics viewing was is ... 0.0015 hours per day - a small number so lets look at is as minutes

    • That equates to 0.0905 minutes per day ... still small, so lets look at it as seconds

    • Bingo!    The equates to 5.4299 seconds per day


    But not everyone Earth has access to the internet.  DataReportal pegs it at 59.5% penetration.

    In summary, the average person on Planet Earth that has internet access watched the 2020 Olympics via YouTube for an average of 9.1 seconds per day (or 2 minutes 25 seconda across the whole 17 days of the Olympics).

    And yes Ed, I am assuming that each stream was watched in full by one person.

  3. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 16, 2021 at 7:24 p.m.

    Nice,John. But I'd still like to compare the digital "audience" to the typical "linear TV" counterpart for, say, an average primetime show on NBC and an average commercial minute. I'm afraid that we can't derive those figures from the data provided. I realize that defining everything in millions---or billions---- of "impressions"  instead of GRPs or ratings is the digital way of explaining audience, but it's really a lot of babble to the average media or advertising person---unless a  meaningful context is also presented.

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