OLYMPICS A HIT ON SOCIAL — LESS SO FOR NBC’S BROADCAST

Network’s average primetime viewership was down about 18% from 2012 Games

Social media won gold during the Olympics with millions of people posting online, leaving NBC’s broadcast viewership in second place.

On Facebook, 227 million people interacted with 1.5 billion posts, and Twitter users sent 187 million tweets, yielding 75 billion impressions (or views on and off Twitter).

NBC, which paid more than $1 billion for broadcast rights to the competition, said it scored some of its own online and social wins: more than 600 million views of its Olympics videos on Facebook, for instance.

But when it comes to key broadcast views, fewer people tuned in than four years ago in London. The network reported an average total audience of 25.4 million viewers in prime time, down about 18% from the 31 million average viewers during the 2012 London Olympics, according to Nielsen data provided by NBC.

Little surprise, Millennials were the most active on social, NBC said. Nearly 50% of Facebook users ages 18 to 34 engaged with Olympic content by liking, sharing and commenting on online posts.

NBC maintains Millennials’ shift to online over broadcast is not necessarily bad for business. Millennials who watched Olympics highlights on social media were more likely to watch primetime coverage on television or stream coverage in prime time, according to a study by Shareablee for NBC.

“The strategy was to meet viewers where they spend time. Social media is today’s water cooler,” Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics, said in a statement to USA TODAY.

“We believe, and the early research indicates, that the more Olympic video consumers viewed on social platforms, the more interested they were in viewing our coverage on television,” Zenkel said.

Analysts were skeptical the network benefited enough from the noisy social conversation around the Olympics.

The drop in Olympics viewership represents the decline of broadcast coverage in place of ondemand, according to Greg Sterling, vice president of strategy for Local Search Association, a nonprofit association of companies engaged in local and locationbased marketing.

Sterling said NBC itself is partly to blame for its lower ratings, due to delayed coverage of the opening ceremonies and resulting criticism.

ODD ANDERSEN, AFP/GETTY IMAGES Brazil forward Neymar poses for a selfie with fans as they celebrate the men’s gold-medal soccer match between Brazil and Germany at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday. Brazil won on penalty kicks.