Two Thirds of UK People to Watch the 2012 Olympic Games Online

Network optimisation firm Riverbed Technology has predicted that almost two-thirds of UK inhabitants will watch this summer’s London 2012 Olympic Games online and, according to their OnePoll study, the Men’s 100m Sprint Final is set to be the most popular event among 55% of respondents. But what about Women’s beach volleyball?

According to the OnePoll study, which surveyed more than 1000 people across the UK, the next most popular online event was the Men’s diving final (29%) and that is followed by the Men’s 100m freestyle swimming (27%). Meanwhile Women’s beach volleyball nabbed support from 22%, which perhaps unsurprisingly grew to 28% among male-only viewers.

Riverbed also warned that almost half of UK online Olympic viewers would be unwilling to tolerate delays of over two minutes when streaming services before moving to a different source.

Apparently the inhabitants of Northern Ireland were the most patient region, which is odd given that they have excellent superfast broadband coverage (i.e. they should be the least patient), and were prepared to wait an average of 3.75 minutes to stream Olympic events before becoming tired of video stream buffering (pauses).

By contrast residents of Yorkshire and Humberside were the least patient and would only wait an average of 2.8 minutes.

Jim Darragh, GM of Riverbed’s Stingray™ Business Unit, said:

“Europeans are changing their viewing habits. And global sporting events like Olympic Games often create traffic spikes as people use their PCs, laptops or mobile devices to watch their favourite athletes, get real-time updates on events, and purchase event-related merchandise. Organisations must take extra measures to meet the demand spike created by the Olympics.”

Unfortunately Riverbed’s study failed to ask whether or not those it surveyed would watch more online events from the home or office. We suspect that most of the online viewing will be done from work as it’s still hard to match the quality of a good HD TV set at home.