Europe goes online for Olympics

click to enlarge

The research identified the men's 100m sprint final as the Olympic event most likely to be watched online with an average of 51% of all respondents. The next most popular event to be watched online was the men's 100m freestyle swimming event, with an average of 36%, followed by the men's football final, which had an average of 30% of respondents claiming it as one of their most popular online events (respondents were able to choose more than one event).

The study, carried out on behalf of Riverbed by OnePoll (UK), IPSOS (France), GMI (Germany) and Multiscope (Netherlands) surveyed 3508 people in April 2012. The research uncovered that approximately one in five Europeans said that they were likely to watch more of this summer's events over the internet as compared to previous Olympic Games. It also found that over half of all online Olympic viewers would be unwilling to tolerate delays of over two minutes when streaming services, before moving to a different source.

click to enlarge

"Changing viewing habits"

Apurva Davé, vice president of products, Stingray Business Unit, at Riverbed said, "Europeans are changing their viewing habits. Global sporting events like Olympic Games often create traffic spikes, as people use their PCs, laptops or mobile devices to watch their favourite athletes, get real-time updates on events and purchase event-related merchandise.

"Organisations must take extra measures to meet the demand spike created by the Olympics. If they do not and their websites are not responsive at peak times, then they could see their viewers giving up and choosing to watch the Games through other means instead, which potentially means lost advertising revenue and forgone e-commerce opportunities."

The company works with organisations worldwide to address performance challenges encountered by enterprise users and consumers when accessing applications and data online.