KARACHI: Friday's opening ceremony of the London Olympics drew an average of 40.7 million viewers, a record audience for a summer opening to the games, according to Nielsen data.
The total is about a million higher than the previous record set by the 1996 Atlanta games of 39.8 million and about six million higher than the 2008 Beijing opener of 34.9 million.
The London ceremony featured an unusual made-for-TV stunt featuring Actor Daniel Craig portraying James Bond escorting the real-life Queen Elizabeth II to the ceremony and ended with Paul McCartney’s anthemic “Hey Jude.” But according to Twitter, the biggest spike in tweets came when Actor Rowan Atkinson appeared as “Mr. Bean” in “Chariots of Fire” homage.
An estimated 5 million comments about the opening ceremony were made on social media, according to the research company Bluefin Labs. It was more interesting to women, apparently, as 58 percent of the comments were from women and 42 percent from men, Bluefin said.
Viewership at Friday night averaged a 21 rating, according to Nielsen, a figure less exciting than that for the 1984 Los Angeles Games, which averaged 23.9. The opening ceremony for the 1996 Atlanta Games averaged a 23.6 rating.
For the Friday night's streaming, the highest rating was created in San Diego, California, averaging 27.8, followed by Washington, DC and West Palm Beach, Florida which tied with 26.8, according to the ratings tracking firm.
The National Broadcasting Corporation, which paid $1.18 billion for the telecast rights, has offered to stream a total of 5,535 hours of coverage of the event. The broadcaster has televised each Summer Olympics since 1988.
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