Beijing Olympic Games become biggest broadcast event in Olympic history: official
20/8/2008 17:58
An official with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said in Beijing
today that the Beijing Olympic Games looks to be the biggest broadcast event in
the Olympic history.
There is an unprecedented amount of Olympic sports
content available, with around 5,000 hours of coverage provided for viewers in
around 200 countries and regions worldwide through the rights holding broadcast
partners, Timo Lumme, managing director of IOC Television and Marketing
Services, said at a press conference in the Games' Main Press Center.
During
the Beijing Games, these partners are expected to make a combined total coverage
which will be around three times that of the Athens Games, Lumme claimed.
He
also hailed the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games as a
sports-related event with the highest broadcast rating in the history of Chinese
television.
"A staggering 842 million people in China tuned in to watch some
coverage of the Opening Ceremony," he said.
"Although we won't have the
complete definitive global statistics for sometime yet, indications suggested
that the figure for the total viewing in the world could be around 1.2 billion
people," he said, adding that the figures from the major markets of the world
had in general surpassed those for the opening ceremonies of the Sydney and
Athens Games.
In the United States, NBC also registered the largest audience
on Saturday night for 18 years as over 40 million viewers tuned in to watch
Michael Phelps win his record eighth gold medal at one Games.
In China, over
one billion people have already watched some Olympic sports coverage. To cater
for this demand, CCTV, IOC's broadcast partner in China, has dedicated a total
of nine channels to the Games' overage, Lumme said.
Xinhua
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