The Olympics are here, if you haven’t noticed! The results are coming in and the Opening Ceremony in Beijing was the MOST VIEWED EVER for a non-U.S. Summer Olympics. It had nearly 70 million total viewers, 14 million more than Athens (56 million).
NON-U.S. OPENING CEREMONY TOTAL AUDIENCE:
1) Beijing – 2008 – 69.9 million
T2) Athens – 2004 – 56.0 million
T2) Sydney – 2000 – 56.0 million
4) Seoul – 1988 – 51.2 million
5) Barcelona – 1992 – 50.2 million
“The Olympic Opening Ceremony captivated the American public in unprecedented numbers for a non-U.S. Olympics,” said Dick Ebersol, Chairman, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. “It was a magical and memorable spectacle and a great way to start the Beijing Olympics.”
Of course you can catch all the coverage on NBCOlympics.com. Even this website has had a huge traffic spike: 70 million page views on Friday, 10 times more than the seven million page views on the opening day of the Athens Games.