Comcast's Olympics takeaway: TV Everywhere increases viewers everywhere

Comcast's Matt Strauss on how letting viewers watch the Olympics everywhere helped drive NBC network ratings.

Comcast saw a huge increase this year in the number of people who consumed Olympic content on demand at NBCOlympics.com. During the Vancouver Games, it had 3 million viewers, but that number soared to 58 million during the London Games. During a panel on “TV Everywhere,” Comcast’s Matt Strauss, senior vice president for digital and emerging platforms, also took note of new consumption trends. During the day, he said, on-demand consumption would rise steadily and peak at about 8 p.m. Then it would drop. Strauss said, “People would use on-demand to catch up (and) watch great moments … so it was interesting to see how those platforms were very complementary. That in some way helped drive incremental audience to tune in to primetime.” Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics, said the Olympics underscored the appetite for second-screen viewing. Zenkel: “Despite any fears one might have had about exhaustion or cannibalization, in that 17 day window when people were emotionally invested in the Olympics, the more we made available, the more was consumed.”