Live events accounted for 71 per cent of all video views during the Olympic Channel’s coverage of the recent Winter Youth Olympic Games in the Swiss city of Lausanne, with viewers’ average watch time increasing by 142 per cent compared to Buenos Aires’ Summer Youth Olympic Games in 2018 to over 20 minutes.
The event, which ran from January 9-22, marked the first time that the Olympic Channel operated during the winter Youth Olympic Games, with the International Olympic Committee’s OTT service providing global digital streaming. The platform delivered 300 hours of live and on-demand event streaming over the course of the Games.
The highest viewership came from host country Switzerland, followed by Japan and the US. The Olympic Channel’s coverage was made available on olympicchannel.com (along with its apps for smartphones and connected TV devices), the Olympic Channel social media accounts, olympic.org and lausanne2020.com. Selected international sports federations and national Olympic committees were also granted content to maximise the reach of the Games.
According to the IOC, coverage of the Games across the Lausanne2020.sport and Olympic platforms attracted three million unique users over the course of the Games, which represents a 200-per-cent rise on the 2016 event in Lillehammer, Norway. Video views across Olympic platforms and social media also totalled 66 million.
Meanwhile, 73 rights-holding broadcasters provided a combined total of close to 2,700 hours of linear television coverage across 191 territories.
The Olympic Channel, which launched at the end of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, streamed live worldwide coverage of the 2018 Youth Olympic Games from Buenos Aires.
Lausanne 2020 organisers also launched a ‘Gamechangers’ campaign to drive youth engagement in the Games, with the IOC today highlighting 500,000 new followers and 90 million sticker views on Instagram and Snapchat as evidence of increased interest in the event.