Early estimates by IOC TV & Marketing Services Managing Dir Timo Lumme revealed that the organization expects that, by the end of the Olympics, "about half the world's population will have watched the Games, with about the same number of people watching the opening ceremony as in 2012," according to Liana B. Baker of REUTERS.
Lumme said that the IOC "was still tallying a final figure" for the Opening Ceremony but his "prognosis is that the global audience will probably be about the same as London, and London did 342 million." Viewers' habits "change during every edition of the Games, with more searching for Olympics news online or through social media, fragmenting the traditional broadcast audiences that advertisers still pay a premium for.
U.S. ratings for the opening ceremony were down significantly compared to London." The IOC estimate that half the world "will watch some part of the Games is in line with the last Summer Games in 2012, when the IOC found that 3.6 billion people around the world watched at least one minute." Lumme said that "ratings are strong in the Americas, thanks to a favorable time difference, as well as in Brazil." Globo TV, the main Brazilian rights holder, "had its highest ratings since the World Cup in 2014" (REUTERS, 8/18).
