BBC Sport says its digital service surrounding the Rio Olympics reached 102.3m unique global browsers, with 68.3m coming from the UK, making it biggest ever success for BBC Sport’s digital service.
While Britain’s athletes excelled in the field, the combination of the BBC Sport website, app, Red Button+ on connected TVs, BBC Sport 360 and BBC iPlayer, was able to beat the 39 million set during London 2012 by some margin. There was also more social media chatter pointing to the BBC Sport digital offer.
The biggest single day for traffic to BBC Sport’s digital service was Super Sunday, with 19 million compared with 10.4 million set in 2012.
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.”
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.
30.2 million UK browsers streamed the action on BBC iPlayer and on BBC Sport. The most-streamed event was Murray v Del Potro in the Men’s Tennis Final with 1.9 million.
A selection of video was also made available on the BBC Sport Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts.
