Canada’s Ratings for The Olympics Continue to Skyrocket

Here’s the final ratings information for Saturday’s viewing of the Winter Olympics in Canada. The ratings were quite high for primetime coverage featuring Jenn Heil in the women’s moguls. Imagine what they will be for Alexandre Bilodeau’s winning of the first Canadian gold medal on home soil.

Vancouver 2010 Audience Recap: Day 2

• — 6.6 million watch Jenn Heil win silver for Canada —
  — Rogers Sportsnet achieves ratings record —
  — Women’s hockey a hit with 2.5 million viewers —

Freestyle skiing coverage last night in Canada delivered SUPER BOWL-like numbers for Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium. The Ladies Moguls Final averaged 6.6 million viewers as Jenn Heil won Canada’s first medal of the Games, peaking at 8 million viewers in the final minute. The event delivered more viewers than SUPER BOWL XLIV on CTV and is one of the most-watched broadcasts on Canadian television this season.

Average audiences from coverage by Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium for Day 2 of the 2010 Winter Games.

OLYMPIC MORNING: 1.4 million
OLYMPIC DAYTIME: 4.9 million
OLYMPIC PRIME TIME: 5.4 million

Additional Highlights

• 27 million Canadians watched some part of Consortium coverage yesterday, more than Day 1 and representing 80% of the Canadian population
• The Normal Hill Individual Final in ski jumping, the first medal event of the Games, was watched on average by 5.1 million yesterday morning
• OLYMPIC PRIME TIME on CTV alone averaged more than 3 million viewers
• The Canada vs. Slovakia (2.5 million) and Switzerland vs. Sweden (797,000) Group A games delivered more viewers than HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA (747,000)
• TSN saw 1.65 million watch the Men’s 1500m Final in Short Track
• Rogers Sportsnet’s 1.1 million viewers for the Ladies Moguls Final is one of the Top 3 largest audiences of all time for the channel
• V delivered 609,000 viewers for the Canada/Slovakia Women’s Hockey Group A game
• The most-watched event of the day on RDS was the Men’s 5000m Short Track Final with 494,000 viewers
• CTVOlympics.ca and RDSOlympiques.ca have had more than 20.6 million page views since the start of the Games
• Almost 3.5 million videos have been streamed from the sites since the start of the Games
• On Day 2 of competition, 190,000 hours of video were streamed from Consortium websites with more than 500,000 live video views
• The Athlete Profile of Canada’s first medalist of the 2010 Games, Jenn Heil, was the most-viewed of the day
• Top 5 Sports on the sites were #1 Luge, #2 Hockey, #3 Freestyle Skiing, #4 Short Track Speed Skating and #5 Ski Jumping
• The sites have more than doubled the number of Facebook fans at facebook.com/CTVOlympics in the first two days of competition
• 5,000 fans were interacting through the live blog during the Canadian Women’s Hockey Team 18-0 victory over Slovakia

Top Five Events

Total Viewers Event Time Channels
1. 6.6 million Freestyle Skiing: Ladies Moguls – Final 19:32 CTV, V, Sportsnet
2. 5.4 million Short Track: Ladies 3000m Relay Semifinal 18:55 CTV, TSN, RDS, OMNI2, Omni Alberta, Omni BC
3. 5.1 million Ski Jumping: NH Individual Final 11:25 CTV, TSN, V, RDS
4. 4.4 million Short Track: Men’s 1500m Semifinals 18:18 CTV, TSN, OMNI2, Omni Alberta, Omni BC
5. 4.2 million Short Track: Ladies 500m Heats 17:37 CTV, TSN, OMNI2, Omni Alberta, Omni BC

Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium is delivering 4,800 total hours of coverage from the 2010 Winter Games. Every second of Olympic Games competition will be available live on one of the Consortium’s platforms – CTV, V (and CPAC), Rogers Sportsnet, TSN, RDS, RIS Info Sports, OMNI, OLN, APTN, ATN, CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca.

Sources
Television: BBM Canada
Online: Omniture unless otherwise indicated

One more release coming up.