The Tokyo Olympic Games punctuated our summer, particularly for YouTube viewers. The streaming video platform has been a major rendezvous for athletics fans. Users have watched more than 200 million hours of content related to the Olympics. This is seven times more than during the previous Olympics in Rio in 2016.
While the Tokyo Olympics ended with a bang on August 8, the platforms continue to assess the global competition. While Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have unveiled the rankings of the best publications on these Olympic Games, YouTube is still analyzing the positive impact on its platform. The return in numbers confirms the online enthusiasm of Internet users for the Olympic competition on YouTube.
Tokyo, 7 times stronger than Rio
For the American giant, the Tokyo Olympics were a real success since its users have watched more than 200 million hours of content on the Olympic Games on the platform between July 21 and August 8. That's seven times more than during the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, YouTube pointed out on its official blog: "During Tokyo 2020, YouTube viewers watched more than 200 million hours of Olympic Games content (including the former Olympics and Tokyo) on YouTube. That's seven times the number of hours of Olympic Games content watched on YouTube during Rio 2016."
YouTube did not fail to congratulate itself for such a performance, highlighting the collaboration between different TV channels around the world: "We worked with broadcasters around the world to provide the most complete viewing experience, including live broadcasts of the opening and closing ceremonies, clips of memorable moments, highlights of all the action from the 33 Olympic sports and athletes' content directly from Tokyo. You have responded in a huge way".
Did the health crisis boost online content for these Olympics?The hypothesis is more than likely, since on average Olympic Games content was watched more than 190 million times per day, that is to say five times more than the average views per day, during the Summer Olympics in Rio five years ago.
A surge of interest that has also largely benefited the Olympic Games official YouTube channel, Olympics. Almost two million users have subscribed: "In just two weeks, the Olympics YouTube channel alone has gone from 6 million subscribers to 7.9 million subscribers." As of today, the YouTube channel has 8.04 million subscribers.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have obviously delighted the hearts of fans both behind their computer screens and on TV. Jean-Briac Perrette, CEO of Discovery International, reported "never before seen digital numbers". More than 275 million viewers watched the Olympics in Europe.
