The Nine Network says its 17-day London Olympics broadcast reached more Australians than any other Olympic broadcast in Australian television history.
Nine’s free-to-air coverage reached more than 13.57 million viewers, outperforming the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games by almost 920,600 and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games by 1.06 million.
On average Nine delivered 1.62 million viewers across the early evening and evening timeslots (6.30pm – 10.30pm) of London 2012. Nine’s broadcast partner Foxtel attracted 538,170 viewers across the corresponding timeslot, bringing the aggregate five-city metro television audience to 2.13 million.
Despite the ratings, Nine has previously confirmed that it will lose no more than $20 million on the venture. Nine and Foxtel jointly paid $120 million for the rights to screen the Olympics. However, Nine's new shows, Big Brother and Underbelly Badness – which were incessantly spruiked during the Olympics broadcast – posted strong ratings this week.
Meanwhile, ninemsn’s London 2012 website attracted 46 million page impressions and 6 million video stream.
MEDIA STATISTICS
Television
• The highest reaching Olympics broadcast – 13.57 million viewers
• +60 per cent share across all key demographics during Olympic based programming
• Averaged 1.6 million viewers across primetime coverage
Digital
The official ninemsn London 2012 Olympics website:
• Averaged 400,000 daily visitors
• Served over 46 million page impressions, and
• Streamed 6 million videos during the Games.
Social Media
• 2.5 million tweets in the first 24 hours
• 18,631 tweets per minute during the opening ceremony
• 19,390,900 total tweets across 17 days