An unusual Games where most of the venues held events without spectators, the Tokyo Olympics demonstrated a new form for the major sporting event -- the "Streaming Olympics," where people could watch online.
"The Tokyo Games will remain, I think, the first streaming Olympic Games," said Timo Lumme, the IOC's director of television and marketing services, during a press conference held on Aug. 3.
He recognized that thanks to the diffusion of smartphones and high-speed communications in the world, the way fans engaged themselves in the Games has entered a new era: watching and listening via streaming services and posting messages and videos.
The broadcasters of countries around the world, which have assumed a pivotal role in the propagation of the Olympics, have been expanding their streaming businesses. Thee IOC said the Tokyo Games are expected to be the biggest event for the streaming business of the NBC, a U.S. television network. In Europe, the hours viewers spent watching the events distributed by the streaming services of broadcasters during the first seven days of the Games were at an 18-fold increase from those during the entire 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
The Tokyo Games saw a record number of digital tools and platforms used. Users of IOC websites and apps, through which people could watch videos such as interviews with athletes, topped 160 million. Users per day during the Tokyo Games doubled compared to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
The new arrangement adopted at the Tokyo Games that a hosting city can add sporting events to the program, has also played a part in drawing in viewers. The events of skateboarding and surfing, held this time to attract young people, have also proved popular on the IOC websites and on the apps. For the skateboarding events, more than 700,000 people under 20 accessed the sites on July 26 alone.
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