TORONTO – More Canadians tuned in to CBC/Radio-Canada’s coverage of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games than any other Olympics in history, the broadcaster said this week.
From February 6 – 23, more than 33.35 million Canadians viewed at least some Sochi 2014 content in English or French across all platforms. Day 16 (Sunday, February 23) was the most-watched day of Sochi 2014 with a daily reach of 26.5 million viewers. The men’s ice hockey gold medal match was viewed by approximately 15 million Canadians (almost half the population), generating an average 2+ audience of more than 8.5 million over the five networks that broadcast the game live from 7:10 – 9:19 AM ET.
More Canadians viewed digital Sochi 2014 content via their desktops alone than all of the Olympic content consumed across all digital platforms during Vancouver 2010, according to CBC. Over the course of Sochi 2014, cbc.ca/olympics and olympiques.radio-canada.ca together received more than 256 million website views, while the app garnered more than 380 million views for a combined total of more than 636 million views from February 6 – 23. As of February 23, there were more than 2.5 million downloads of the CBC Olympic Games Mobile App on iOS and Android devices.
CBC added that 10.7 million Canadians watched Olympic content via online streams on the CBC and/or SRC sites throughout Sochi 2014, and they consumed about 14 million hours of online video content. This is almost twice as much as was consumed during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.
“The way Canadians consume Olympic content has changed and CBC/Radio-Canada embraced and facilitated that change through robust digital and mobile offerings including live streaming of every hour of competition on our responsive website and through the CBC Olympic Games app while maintaining the world class TV coverage our viewers expect,” said Jeffrey Orridge, CBC’s executive director of sports properties and general manager, Olympics sports properties, in the press release. “Sochi 2014 set the bar in terms of how an Olympic Games has to be covered. For the first time ever, Canadians were able to see what they wanted from wherever they were in Canada at any time they wanted it and CBC/Radio-Canada is proud to have made that possible.”
