Despite reports that Yahoo! Sports outdrew the official Olympics site at NBCOlympics.com, a new study from Digital Life America said Olympics viewers rated NBCOlympics.com as their favorite site for last month’s Games.
According to the study, released today, about one-third of viewers picked NBCOlympics.com as the top site from the Games, followed by Yahoo! Sports at 25%.
Also, 45% rated of viewers said their experience at NBCOlympics.com was “excellent” and 49% said it was “good.” But they didn’t go to NBCOlympics.com to watch videos. Most viewers went to the site to check the schedule or the medal standings. Streaming video ranked as the fourth most popular activity on the site. That may be because some users had trouble streaming. Of those who tried to stream videos, about two-thirds were successful, while about one-quarter gave up due to problems with streaming or access, the study found.
On the broadcast side the study found that American viewers gave NBC an A- when grading the network’s performance. Survey respondents said the production values were high and they also liked the background coverage of athletes and Chinese culture. However, some viewers said NBC jumped around, showed too much of the same sports and didn’t explain well when certain events were taking place.
Nearly 80% of respondents watched at least one day of coverage, with one-third following 10 days or more of the Olympics. About 86% of viewers said they watched primarily on TV. Only 16% of respondents said they used video-on-demand from the cable operator to catch up on the Games.