Sign of the times

The winter Olympics from Turin is not a great success when it comes to television broadcast. But the net is a whole different story. NBCOlympics.com opened up for traffic January 9th and this Wednesday they reached 261.1 million page views. That’s 10 million more than Athens two years ago.

That’s probably not that much of a surprise, even if it’s a whole lot of people. But what’s more interesting is that the use of streaming video is peaking. The Olympic site has delivered 6.4 million video streams and more than 72,000 hours of video - double the amount of video from the Athens Olympics.

The young generation is more accustomed to using the web as a infotainment platform than the elders, and if sailing wants to reach this audience we have to get in to the net on all levels. Fast. The top three video clips viewed so far where Shaun White Wins Gold in halfpipe, Lindsay Jacobellis’ snowboard cross race and ice dancing. That the young ones voting with their mouse, and the guys on NBC has definitely caught on:

- The success of NBCOlympics.com validates our strategy to utilize the site not only to promote and compliment our network and cable coverage but as a standalone entertainment platform, says Gary Zenkel, NBCOlympics.com President, in a statement to New York Business.