BBC Sees Huge Video Streaming Jump from London Olympics

You would expect the recent London Olympics to have driven higher use of Internet and Internet video content. It did. 

An average 9.5 million global daily uniques to the BBC Sport website is almost a quarter higher than the previous record level for BBC. 

Video requests doubled from those seen during any previous event (106 million) and were higher than the 2008 games (32 million) and 2010 World Cup (38 million).


      Usage by hour across the day by device - for 28 July to Aug. 9

A third of Web visits came from mobile devices. But only a tenth of video requests were mobile.

Most interestingly, the majority of video requests (62 million) were for live streams. Only eight million were for on-demand live streams, 35 million were for short-form clips.

The BBC, which adapts streaming quality to viewers’ bandwidth, says the average bitrate was “the highest the BBC has ever delivered online” at 1Mbps.

There were some notable changes in device usage as well. The BBC data shows that PC usage was at its peak during the week at lunch time and during the mid-afternoon.

Mobile usage becomes dominant around 6 pm as people leave the office.
Tablet usage reaches a peak at around 9 pm when people seem to be using them as a second screen experience as they watch the Games on their TVs and also as they continue to watch in bed, BBC says.

But consumption of video content on mobile has been  the key takeaway from the two weeks, according to the BBC, which saw 12 million requests for video on mobile across the whole of the Games.