Opening Ceremony Hits Record Viewing Figures
Top line figures for the London 2012 Opening Ceremony on BBC1 and BBC HD hit new records for sport on TV, with a five minute peak of 26.9m – thrashing the previous highest sporting moment, England’s Euro 2004 defeat to Portugal.
An audience of 23.9m watched the knockout match 8 years ago, while this year now holds 3 of the top 4 sport on TV moments in terms of viewing figures.
England’s quarter-final defeat to Italy in Euro 2012 hit a 5 min peak of 23.2 and Andy Murray’s defeat to Roger Federer in this year’s Wimbledon final was also popular with the viewing British public, peaking at 17.1m.
The Opening Ceremony had an average audience of 22.4m, a share of 82%.
The Athens 2004 Opening Ceremony hit a peak of 10.7m, while Beijing peaked at 5.9m in 2008.
Meanwhile, unique browsers on the BBC Sport website also hit impressive figures with 4.5m people visiting the site during the day of the Ceremony, and a new record of 6.1m visitors globally during day two of the Olympic Games on Sunday.
The previous high of 5.7m followed the on-pitch collapse of Bolton’s Fabrice Muamba on 17th March.
