YouTube viewership during the Tokyo Olympics grew by a factor of seven over 2016’s Rio Games.
According to the video giant, viewers watched 200 million hours of Olympics content this year, to the tune of 190 million daily views on average. (This includes footage from the Tokyo games and previous Olympics, YouTube said). In 2016, during the Rio games, viewers watched 29 million hours of Olympics content, clocking 24 million daily average views.
This year, creators and publishers uploaded a total of 5,000 hours of Olympics-related content. YouTube partnered with broadcasters to stream the opening and closing ceremonies, aired highlights across all 33 sports, and of course hosted vlogs from athletes themselves who provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse on the ground.
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In its blog, YouTube called out British diver Tom Daley (pictured above), with 1.1 million subscribers, whose #DaleyDiaries series — chronicling his Olympics journey and goings-on at the Olympic Village — surpassed 4.3 million views. Mexican diver Rommel Pacheco amassed 1 million views during the games, with 14% of that tally coming from YouTube Shorts.
Ahead of the Olympics, YouTube TV introduced several sports-specific features, including a medal tracker, the ability to jump to specific sports moments within a DVR recording, and new ways to search for sports moments within their DVR libraries.
