M+E Daily

Sharing the Summer Olympics: P2P Downloads of 2012 Opening Ceremony Appear Down from 2008 Levels

By Stephanie Bohnert, Peer Media Technologies

In the U.S. alone, it has been reported that 42 million viewers tuned in to watch the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London. A few hours after the opening ceremony finished airing on Friday, July 27th, the full program was available to download from BitTorrent. The BitTorrent versions of the program are commercial free and include portions of the opening ceremony which were not aired in the U.S., notably the tribute to the victims of the July 2005 London bombings.

At Peer Media Technologies, we’ve been tracking the number of people attempting to download various versions of the opening ceremony on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, using our Media Intelligence Service. Our Media Intelligence Service tracks initiated downloads of U.S. primetime TV shows and major U.S. movie titles on three P2P networks: BitTorrent, eDonkey, and Ares. Based on our methodology, we estimate that there have been roughly 280,000 initiated downloads of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, with the peak of these downloads happening in the two days following the event. This observation is illustrated in the chart below.

Source: PMT's Media Intelligence Service

Most downloads of the opening ceremony are observed to be coming from China and the U.S., which represent roughly 15% and 12% of total worldwide downloads, respectively. The table below lists the top 10 countries where we’ve seen downloading of the opening ceremony.  Interestingly, the top downloading countries are primarily in Asia.

Source: PMT's Media Intelligence Service

Through this analysis we have identified four versions of the opening ceremony, which account for 87% of all P2P download activity of the event. The most popular version of the opening ceremony being downloaded on P2P networks is an SD version of the BBC broadcast with a file size of nearly 3GB. This single version accounts for nearly 50% of the total P2P download activity for the opening ceremony. The HD version of the BBC broadcast has roughly 20% of the total P2P download activity.

Source: PMT's Media Intelligence Service

One reason for the relatively small number of 280,000 initiated P2P downloads may be that the event was widely available worldwide via NBC and BBC, and that despite complaints from some viewers that NBC didn’t stream the event live online, the vast majority of U.S. households that have a cable or satellite subscription could see everything they wanted to see. In fact, NBC announced it had served over 102.6 million streams of the London games through Sunday, August 5th to verified online and mobile devices.

It is possible to conclude that the network’s strategy to make the opening ceremony and other Olympic events as widely available as possible has therefore been a commercial success, with considerably diminished online piracy taking place compared to previous years. By contrast, in August 2008 the blog TorrentFreak claimed there had been over one million downloads of the opening ceremony in Beijing in the days after the original broadcast on August 8th. On the other hand, it is also possible that the UK opening ceremony was simply less compelling than the Beijing event in terms of viewer interest.

Another potential reason for the relatively small number of P2P downloads of the London games’ opening ceremony compared to Beijing is the increased availability of unauthorized streams of the content from a number of online sports sites. Essentially all of the most popular sports streaming websites (livetv.ru, rojadirecta.me, thefirstrow.eu, etc.) are hosting live Olympics streaming coverage. Some of these sites are hosting the content in multiple languages including English, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. Additionally, several of these sites continue to stream previously aired London 2012 events, including the opening ceremony. As illegal sports streaming sites have gained popularity in recent years, it’s not particularly surprising that consumers are choosing to view sports via streaming as opposed to P2P downloads.

In addition to the opening ceremony, we have also seen a number of downloads for specific Olympic events from London. At this point in the games, the most downloaded events are women’s gymnastics, men’s basketball, and women’s volleyball.

We will be providing a more complete analysis of download activity for the 2012 Summer Olympics once the games conclude. For more information on PMT’s Media Intelligence Service, please contact Raj Samtani ([email protected]).