The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games generated huge television ratings for UK public-service broadcaster the BBC and broke records for US broadcast rights-holder, the NBC network.
The ceremony, which commenced at 9pm local time and was shown live by BBC One and the broadcaster’s high-definition channel, was watched by a peak of 26.9 million viewers in the UK at 9:50pm. The entire show, which lasted more than three hours, averaged 22.4 million viewers for an 82.5-per-cent audience share – the largest audience for any programme on UK television since England’s loss to Argentina at the 1998 Fifa World Cup attracted an average of 23.8 million to commercial broadcaster ITV.
NBC said that its coverage attracted its largest ever audience for a summer Games opening ceremony, with an average of 40.7 million tuning in. This figure topped the 1996 Atlanta Games opening ceremony average of 39.8 million and was nearly six million more than the 2008 Beijing Olympics (34.9 million) and 15 million more than the 2004 Athens Olympics (25.4 million).
NBC’s ratings success continued over the weekend. Its two-day primetime average of 35.6 million viewers across Saturday and Sunday gave the network its best ever figures for the opening weekend of the Games.
In other news, the International Olympic Committee completed an exclusive deal to allow the IMG Media agency to show live coverage of the London 2012 Games to airline and cruise ship passengers travelling with Lufthansa, Gulf Air and Norwegian Cruise Liner ships. The agreement marks the first time that live coverage from an Olympic Games has ever been broadcast in the air or at sea.
More than 200 hours of action from a variety of sports will be shown on Sport 24 – the 24-hour live sports channel exclusively produced by IMG for the airline and cruise industry.