The London 2012 Olympics has been packed full of memorable moments and record breaking achievements. Not just for the athletes but for the BBC.com’s sports section, which doubled the number of international visitors (excluding UK) from five million (year to date) to 10.5 million.
The sports page also successfully broke the 10 million mark of Global visits (including UK) on four out of five consecutive days (Wednesday 1 August through to Sunday, 5 August ). The international sports online page attracted 10.5 million visits from outside the UK and combined with the UK’s weekly average of 24.4* million resulted in the overall number of global visits reaching 34.7* million up from 18.7 million year to date.
International sports fans looking for the latest high-quality, comprehensive and in depth analysis, on all the latest news, live text commentary reports and details on all the events and athletes, helped to drive the daily average of BBC.com to 4.5 million and increase of 30%. The opening ceremony weekend itself drew four million unique users on average per day for BBC.com as a whole, a 16%* increase on the usual daily traffic. Whilst, the sports section also witnessed an average daily spike of 1.7 million unique users which equates to a 54%* increase.
Elswhere, the dedicated Olympics page attracted 1.5 million, more than double the daily reach of the World Cup site in 2010, with the medals table proving to be most the popular page across BBC.com. The United States and Canada have contributing 32% of traffic to the medal table page, whilst Germany has generated almost 50% more traffic to the medals page than the site as a whole over the same period.
China and South Korea dominated the news agenda early on in the games driving a significant amount of traffic to the sports site. China saw an increase of 70%** more traffic to the sports website compared to the average and South Korea contributed 50%** more traffic to the side, also compared to the average.
Fans across the globe have also been immersing themselves in the interactive elements of BBC.com, including ‘Your Olympic Body’ story which allows users to pitch themselves against the athletes and discover who they are most like. The virality helped to drive an unprecedented level of social referrals back to the article on site, making it one of the top 10 Olympics pages so far. And finally photo galleries are also bolstering engagement across World Service sites, where fans are enjoying the latest images from the Games.
