Record breaking Rio for BBC Sport’s digital service

BBC Sport’s coverage of the Olympics Games in Rio reached 102.3m unique global browsers, with 68.3m coming from the UK, the biggest ever success for BBC Sport’s digital service.

Published: 22 August 2016
With Team GB performing heroics, we wanted to deliver all the medal moments and breath-taking action to audiences wherever they were online - and in doing so we’re delighted BBC Sport has cemented its position as the number one digital destination for sport.
— Ben Gallop, Head of Digital and Radio, BBC Sport

Across the BBC Sport website, app, Red Button+ on connected TVs, BBC Sport 360 and BBC iPlayer, record numbers engaged with the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics, beating the 39m set during London 2012. On social media, more people than ever before were referred to BBC Sport’s digital service during the Games.

The biggest single day for traffic to BBC Sport’s digital service was Super Sunday, with 19m compared with 10.4m set in 2012.

The experimental BBC Sport 360 service, which provided live and on-demand content in 360-degree video for the first time, drew over 1m views across all platforms and hundreds of users provided feedback on the service to help the BBC further understand the potential of this emerging technology.

A record number of BBC Sport fans also personalised their service throughout the Games, with 500k unique browsers visiting their ‘My Sport’ page and over 150k users following Olympic sports to create their own personal Olympics destination.

The number of subscribers to BBC Sport’s push alerts increased by 400k to 2.8m during the event, as people added sport news and medals alerts and over 350k event reminders were sent so that users did not miss out on their favourite events. 3.9m browsers also visited the ‘Which Olympic athlete are you?’ feature which allowed users to see which athlete competing at Rio was most like their body type.

29.3m global browsers have followed the Games in Rio via BBC live pages on the BBC Sport website and app with streams, text updates, clips, medal tables, schedules and catch up, whilst 30.2m UK browsers have streamed the action on BBC iPlayer and on BBC Sport.

The top 5 streamed events were:

  • Murray v Del Potro in the Men’s Tennis Final (1.9m)
  • Opening Ceremony (1.0m)
  • First round mixed doubles: Murray/Watson v Ferrer/Suarez Navarro (1.0m)
  • Men's Cycling Road Race including Froome (1.0m)
  • Day 8 coverage on BBC One (0.9m)

It has been a phenomenal year for live events online with the BBC with live coverage of Glastonbury, the EU Referendum, Euro 2016, Wimbledon and the Olympic Games in Rio.

Total global unique browsers to live BBC coverage online in 2016 includes:

  • Euro 2016: 26.8m global unique browsers throughout the tournament.
  • EU Referendum: 17.6m global unique browsers across the week of the vote
  • Glastonbury: 580k global unique browsers during the festival
  • Wimbledon: 14.8m global unique browsers throughout the tournament
  • Rio 2016: 29.3m global unique browsers across the Games

As well as on-site success, there has been an unprecedented social media offering throughout the summer of sport targeted at reaching more than 30m fans and followers of BBC Sport accounts.

On Twitter and Facebook, BBC Sport achieved its highest ever social media reach in a single day on ‘Super Sunday’, with over 108m impressions on @bbcsport and 31m reach on the BBC Sport Facebook page respectively. A selection of key moments of action videos were provided across the BBC Sport Twitter, You Tube and Facebook accounts, where fans also had the chance to interact with leading Team GB athletes through regular Facebook Lives. BBC Sport also partnered with Snapchat to provide live stories on a daily basis throughout the Olympic Games to a UK audience and with Google on the OneBox experience.

Record numbers were referred to the website via BBC Sport social media posts during the Olympics, with over 22m referrals during the course of the Games.

The BBC has also inspired people across the country to get active, with 930k unique browsers to the Get Inspired website during the Olympics and over 400k unique browsers to the activity finder and over 12k uses of #GetInspired. The top five activity guides visited were cycling, gymnastics, swimming, athletics and running.

Ben Gallop, BBC Sport's Head of Digital and Radio, says: “Building on the legacy of London 2012 and the phenomenal success of the first digital Olympic Games, BBC Sport’s digital service has provided coverage on an unprecedented scale during Rio 2016. With Team GB performing heroics, we wanted to deliver all the medal moments and breath-taking action to audiences wherever they were online - and in doing so we’re delighted BBC Sport has cemented its position as the number one digital destination for sport.”

SB

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