Recently, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the data shows that the Beijing Winter Olympics has become the highest-rated Winter Olympics so far, and has attracted more than 2 billion people on global social media. According to Conviva's latest data, millions of people abroad watched the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics this year, a 349% increase in streaming viewership compared to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018. Among them, the number of people watching on mobile devices is also the peak of the ratings of large events in recent years.
The report shows that on February 4, the nearly four-hour opening ceremony was held at the Beijing National Stadium, and the ratings began to grow rapidly in the first hour of the opening ceremony, and then stabilized in the second and third hours. From the past data, the share of viewing time of mobile devices such as tablets is very low, mainly concentrated on large-screen terminals, from the streaming platform, Roku, Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV and other networked TV devices tied for the first place, of which users use smart TVs account for 14%, and users who use mobile devices to watch account for 12%.
On mobile devices, the highest percentage of users using tablets to watch the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics is the highest, with up to 55% of viewers using iPads to watch the opening ceremony, the second most popular mobile device is the iPhone accounting for 18% Android tablets with a 15% share, followed by Android phones with a share of 13%.
On the big screen, the terminal screen, including cable TV, smart TV and game consoles (most foreign game consoles can subscribe to streaming platforms), accounted for about half of the viewing time of the opening ceremony. In the segmentation of the big-screen viewing data, Roku led the way with a 38% viewership, while Roku usually leaned towards the North American audience, so the audience watched the opening ceremony at 3:30 a.m., but this did not deter the drawn-in audience. In addition, Apple TV, Samsung TV and Linux Set-Top Box (Linux STB) are at the waist of ratings at 10%, 8%, and 8%, respectively, and Android TVs and LG TVs account for 4% of large screen viewing time.
Researcher Jun believes that the reason why the Beijing Winter Olympics can soar in foreign ratings explains the three changes in the post-epidemic era: First, although the epidemic abroad is still raging, the passion, joy and friendship brought by ice and snow sports are still shared by people around the world; second, with the advancement of science and technology, China has for the first time applied 8K technology to broadcast the opening ceremony and key events, and the event broadcast jointly with the 5G network, and the viewing experience is different from the past.
Third, the rapid development of global streaming media platforms has provided a strong arm for the dissemination of the Beijing Winter Olympics. According to the data, in the first few months of the Winter Olympics, the official accounts of the Olympic Committees from more than 120 different countries have been steadily releasing content. Compared to the average activity of the previous six weeks, the week before the Olympic Games increased by 370%. Social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok, have attracted the attention of many audiences.
It can be said that since the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, streaming media-related technologies have continuously refreshed the viewing experience of the people in front of the screen. For example, in the ski series, the fast follow-up technique allows the audience to see every detail of the athlete, including the ice crystals that the skateboard stirs up on the slopes. In sports such as speed skating, the 360-degree free perspective system recreates the highlight moments of athletes from multiple angles for the audience, so that many "small actions" that have made the audience indignant in the past have nowhere to hide, which has greatly stimulated the audience's desire to watch the Winter Olympics. In addition, it is not difficult to see for various reasons that streaming has begun to become a preferred way to watch live events.