With the 2008 Olympics underway in Beijing, Nielsen Online released U.S. Internet audience figures for the top 10 most visited Olympics-related content Web sites and traffic to NBC's online video content. With momentum building prior to the opening ceremonies, fans are now finding results, news and video online.

Table 1: Unique Audience (in 000's) to Olympics-related Sites, ranked by UA on August 9, 2008 (U.S., Home and Work) 


Name                       August 6     August 7     August 8     August 9
NBC Olympics                    841        1,392        2,664        4,008
Yahoo Olympics                1,505        1,430        1,477        3,324
AOL Olympics                    511          718          395        1,010
Beijing2008.cn                   39          114          429          780
New York Times Olympics         432          369          341          466
ESPN Olympics                   196           80          273          343
USA Today Olympics               34           55          280          184
Olympics.org                     NA*          10           16          153
BBC Olympics                     33           27           97          128
Sports Illustrated Olympics      NA*          15           45          112

Source: Nielsen Online, NetView Custom Analysis
*Not reportable for daily data

The Video Games

The audience to NBC's Olympics video offering -- which will include more than 2,000 hours of live coverage during the games, along with replays and athlete interviews -- drew a U.S. unique audience of 436,000 users on the day of the opening ceremony, and nearly doubled to 858,000 unique visitors on August 9, as fans followed the first official day of competition.

Table 2: Unique Audience (in 000's) to NBC Olympics Video URL 


Name                       August 6     August 7     August 8     August 9
NBC Olympics Video Site**        NA***        36          436          858

Source: Nielsen Online, NetView Custom Analysis
**Does not represent actual streams or video viewing
***Not reportable for daily data

"With the ubiquity of broadband and the breadth of available content combined with the time difference between the U.S. and Beijing this truly is the first online video Olympics," commented Jon Gibs, vice president, media analytics, Nielsen Online. "With the unique audience to NBC's Olympics video section doubling from August 8th to August 9th, and overall traffic to NBC Olympics growing by 50 percent, it will be interesting to track video usage trends throughout the games."