Rio wins the battle for all screens

For a week, the Olympics dominated TV, Twitter and Facebook with viewers watching and then talking it up on social media

Viewers went all thumbs out for the Olympics, watching into the late hours on television and then posting and tweeting about it for days, going by the numbers that have just come in from BARC and social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. According to BARC data, Star Sports 3 beat its nearest rival Ten Sports by a huge margin. Facebook said, across the globe, 277 million people had 1.5 billion interactions related to the Olympic Games and among Indian athletes, the photograph of hockey player Poonam Malik with wrestler Sakshi Malik was the most talked about moment. On Twitter, over 187 million tweets were sent about the Games and in total, this led to 75 billion impressions (views on and off Twitter) about Rio 2016.

Sports ruled the airwaves as Sakshi Malik, Dipa Karmakar and PV Sindhu brought India closer to winning medals. Interestingly Olympics trumped cricket that week, even though the Indian cricket team was winning against the home team in the Caribbean.

Cricket did not make a dent in the chatter around the Olympics either - be it on traditional or new media. And what has turned around to be quite a revelation for brands is that the Olympics continues to rule the conversation on social media platforms even after the Games have drawn to a close. For many brands this helps lengthen their associations with the event and the athletes long after the dust has settled on the game and their contracts.

According to BARC data (August 13-19), Star Sports 3 (which ran the Hindi standard definition feed) topped the charts with a total of 106 million impressions (total number of viewers who tuned in, including repeat viewers). The second place holder Ten Sports 1 lagged by a large margin. The English language feed on Star Sports 2 with 78 million impressions took the third place.

The PV Sindhu final against Spain's Carolina Marin was the top rated sports programme for the week, clocking in 5.8 million impressions on Star Sports 3, 5.6 million impressions on Star Sports 2 and a total of 17.3 million impressions across all the channels it was telecast on (Star Sports 2 and 3, the respective HD feeds and Doordarshan).

The badminton semi-final was also widely viewed with a total of 6.4 million impressions across channels it was telecast on while Sakshi Malik's cliff-hanger match which gave India its first medal this Olympics, registered 3.36 million impressions across channels (the lower numbers could be because the match was telecast around 2.30 am India time).

TOP 5 OLYMPICS MOMENTS FOR INDIA BASED ON TWEETS PER MINUTE SPIKES

1. P V Sindhu (@pvsindhu1) wins the first set of her Olympics final
2. Dipa Karmakar (@DipaKarmakar) lands the Produnova in her Olympics final
3. Sakshi Malik (@SakshiMalik) wins bronze
4. Abhinav Bindra (@Abhinav_Bindra) makes it to a shoot-off
5. Sania Mirza (@MirzaSania) and Rohan Bopanna (@rohanbopanna) win the first set of their semi-final

On Facebook and Twitter, conversations around the medal wins and performances reached a crescendo as the Games drew to a close. PV Sindhu's first set win in the badminton finals topped the charts in terms of tweets per minute (among Indian athletes) while Dipa Karmakar landing the Produnova during her routine in the gymnastics final was the second most talked about moment on Twitter. Sindhu and Sakshi Malik led the table in terms of most mentioned Indian athletes on Twitter, followed by Dipa Karmakar, Abhinav Bindra and Sania Mirza.

"Rio 2016 saw Indians come together on Twitter at a scale never seen before. There were more than two million tweets, more than the number for the India-Pakistan and India-Australia matches at the 2016 ICC World T20 combined," said Aneesh Madani, head of sports partnerships at Twitter India.