August 17, 2012

The London Games: Memorable Moments On Many Devices

By Matt Strauss, senior vice president/Digital and Emerging Platforms, Comcast Cable

The 2012 London Olympics was a showcase for great individual and team achievements for American athletes, and provided many occasions for us to celebrate their successes. More than 219 million unique viewers stateside tuned in across all screens, making it the most-viewed event in U.S. TV history and certainly a defining moment for "TV Everywhere."

In more ways than ever, Xfinity customers were able to follow the athletes' roads to Olympic glory — whether viewing the athletes' personal stories On Demand leading up to the Games, watching the drama unfold live online or on one of nine different TV networks, or experiencing big moments in prime time.

Xfinity is proud to have brought this record amount of content across multiple platforms to our customers and, with that, we noticed some interesting facts and trends regarding Olympic Games viewing, including:

>> Approximately 31 percent of viewers who signed in to watch the Olympics online were Xfinity customers, well-outpacing satellite and other video providers.

>> Viewing across Xfinity TV platforms amounted to nearly 50 million streams (live and On Demand across devices), 22 million of which were On Demand through the set-top box, a nearly 700-percent increase compared with the 2010 Vancouver Games.

>> Xfinity customers watched the Olympics on multiple devices; on average, our customers verified 2.4 devices on which to view streaming Olympics content.

>> Xfinity customers indexed 43-percent higher than the national average for live online streams viewed.

>> 68 percent of streaming video (live and On Demand) was viewed on the PC. Live event streaming typically peaked from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. EST, except for marquee events like the women's gold-medal soccer match, which was at 4 p.m.

>> 32 percent of streaming video (live and On Demand) was viewed on smartphones and tablets combined, with higher viewing on these devices generally on the weekends.

>> Customers appeared to use Xfinity On Demand to catch up on the previous day's action; on a daily basis, Video On Demand usage generally grew steadily as the day progressed and would peak right before prime-time TV viewing.

>> Rather than using the traditional remote control, Xfinity customers flipped between TV channels showing Olympics coverage more than a half million times using the Xfinity TV and Xfinity Sports apps on their smartphones or tablets.

As you can see, Xfinity customers used their smartphones, tablets, PCs and, of course, their TVs to immerse themselves in the action of the Olympics, whether at home, at work or on the go.

I'd like to personally thank everyone on the Xfinity team who worked around the clock for many months to make this all possible for our customers. But there's no rest for the weary...we're looking to build on this success heading into the fall TV season coming soon, when we'll offer more high-demand content in more ways across more devices to our customers. We'll have more details to share on that front shortly, so as always, stay tuned!

Click here  to contact Matt Strauss.