Olympics rights holders grapple with audience measurement complexities
LOS ANGELES, Jan 30, (RTRS): The exploits of the world’s best downhill skiers will be recorded with pinpoint precision at the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics, but the networks showing the Winter Games face a distinctly uphill task in achieving that kind of accuracy when it comes to measuring their viewers.
Today’s fragmenting television viewing landscape is a boon and a bane for Olympics rights holders. Streaming and on-demand viewing mean that audiences in Europe, for example, will be able, for the first time, to watch every second of every Olympic event, live or not. But a proliferation of viewing options brings with it a lot more data, and fully capturing audience information — crucial for setting advertising rates — is beyond the capability of traditional ratings companies.
That has forced broadcasters to devise their own ways of figuring out who is consuming their content, including the wall-to-wall coverage many companies are promising for the Games.
NBC Universal plans to make its Olympic coverage available on broadcast TV, on cable, and via its NBC Sports app, which feeds back viewing data in close to real time. Combined with traditionally harvested ratings information, which offers valuable details like viewer age and gender, the data allow NBC to capture Total Audience Delivery — a more complete picture of who tuned in across TV, mobile, laptop, tablet and other devices.
“We have relied on Nielsen for years,” says Joe Brown, senior VP of Research at NBC Sports Group. “The fact that they delivered something to us that has a nice little bow on it and says, ‘Here is your audience,’ made it somewhat easy, as opposed to a media company getting into the nitty-gritty of the censuslevel data.”
The Total Audience Delivery system had its coming-out party at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and quickly showed its value. “If you judged NBC on television alone, you would have been short about 2 million viewers per minute,” Brown says.
Discovery shelled out $1.4 billion for Olympic rights in Europe and has sublicensed them to free TV in many territories. Eurosport, the sports network it owns, will show 900 hours of live coverage — 4,000 hours in all — via its TV channels and streaming service Eurosport Player. For Eurosport, the issue of tabulating viewers is even more complicated because it needs to measure results not just across multiple screens but across multiple territories, each with different levels of device penetration, broadband rollout and other characteristics.
Senior executives at Discovery express frustration that the ratings agencies cannot cope with the breadth of its multiplatform offering or present a comprehensive standard measurement accepted by advertisers across the industry. Like NBC, Discovery’s Eurosport is developing its own system. entire continent of Africa.
Yes, they get the comparisons to “Cool Runnings” — the 1993 film based on the true story of the Jamaica’s first bobsled team, which was male, who competed in the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Canada — and say it’s a legacy they embrace and a following they hope to emulate.
But the peppy pioneers, all Americanborn and whose parents emigrated from Nigeria, said they also look forward to representing a positive story about their motherland.
“Nigerians are so excited to see the country being represented,” said Adigun, a Chicago native who is also a three-time national track champion for Nigeria. “I realized exactly what was a void from the country of Nigeria, from the continent of Africa, and for women in general being represented.”
Onwumere, 26, agreed, adding: “To be the first to do anything is, I think, it’s just something that you can’t really explain.”
Their story will likely take on added meaning next month, after President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Africa’s “shithole countries.”
Their journey to South Korea has also been a fast one. Three years ago, the team was little more than an idea, a “crazy but amazing journey,” said Adigun, the driver in role and personality who also helped recruit and coach Onwumere, who hails from Dallas, at their alma mater, the University of Houston.
Once her teammates were on board, official Olympic rules required them to operate under a national governing body. None existed.
The Bobsled and Skeleton Federation of Nigeria was formed. A GoFund Me campaign
was created in 2016, and the team raised more than $75,000 in 14 months to pay for necessities like helmets, uniforms, travel and their first sled — a wooden vessel affectionately named “The Maeflower.” They began practicing in Houston, without snow.
The team’s popularity soon attracted Visa and Under Armour as sponsors. To qualify for the Winter Games, the women had to complete five races.
They met their goal in November.