Most Americans streamed the Olympics
60 percent of viewers watched games on PCs, not mobile devices.
With the 2016 Summer Olympics now a memory, it’s time to look back at how Americans took in all that sports coverage. How we watched the Rio games can tell us a lot about the current state of media and technology and give us insights on trends in mobile device adoption and cord-cutting.
What one research provider found about our Olympics viewing habits may be surprising. Although some viewers inevitably found ways to get around it, Comcast-owned NBC is the exclusive provider of Olympics coverage in the United States. The network analysis firm Sandvine measured Olympics streaming on NBC from a single day, Aug. 10, from a single broadband provider it declined to name. Overall, Olympics streaming accounted for about 2 percent of prime time evening Internet usage, according to Sandvine.
Here’s what Sandvine found overall: Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, accounted for almost 20 percent of the evening’s Olympics stream. An additional 17 percent went to set-top boxes, such as Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. Of these, Roku boxes were the overwhelming favorite among Olympics viewers, eating up a 10 percent share.
In the end, however, PCs took the prize, accounting for more than 60 percent of that night’s consumption, Sandvine reported.
Why is this so interesting? Well, much of the narrative surrounding entertainment and technology these days has to do with mobile devices becoming a more dominant platform. Sandvine’s data show that iPhones, Android devices and iPads account for almost one-third of general Internet consumption.
Analysts say this discrepancy highlights the particular way in which Americans could access their Olympics coverage online. To watch the Internet live stream, viewers needed to log in through their cable subscription. The downside to this meant being chained to a cable provider, but once you authenticated you could watch from any device — mobile or otherwise.
The average sales price for existing homes and condominiums last month in the Dayton area was $156,968, up 5 percent from the same month a year ago, according to figures released Wednesday by the Dayton Area Board of Realtors.
The median sales price also edged up by 1 percent to $132,000 over the same period, according to the report.
Rising prices reflect tight inventory in the local housing market, which had 1,901 listings last month — a 13 percent decrease from July a year ago. For the year-to-date, there were 13,457 listings from January through July, down from 14,222 listings through the first seven months of last year.
While prices continued to climb, total sales declined from June’s all-time high as the red-hot spring and early summer selling season began to cool. Total sales for July dropped 3 percent to 1,495, compared to July 2015.
Across the state, July’s average home price of $173,091 represented a 3.4 percent increase from July 2015, according to the Ohio Association of Realtors. Meanwhile, the number of homes sold statewide in July fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 146,746, down 1.1 percent from a year ago, representing the first year-to-year decline in 22 months, according to the Ohio association.
“Despite the slight drop in monthly home sales activity, the marketplace remains strong as the rate of sales during July reached the month’s second-best mark since we began recording data in 1998,” said OAR President Sara Calo. “After nearly two years of unabated growth, we have built a solid foundation for Ohio’s housing sector, one that is able to withstand the normal ebbs and flows that occur in the marketplace. Equally important, the market is continuing to experience a steady, modest rise in the average sales price.”