GENEVA, SWITZERLAND—Around 2.1 billion folks worldwide watched the Sochi Olympics on TV, according to research commissioned by the International Olympic Committee. The research survey was conducted by KantarSport, a division of Kantar Media, after the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games earlier this year, with a total of 36,000 people surveyed in 16 countries—Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, United Kingdom and United States of America.
The Sochi games had a broadcast audience of 2.1 billion people, an increase of 13 percent over the Vancouver 2010 games, Kantar found. There was also more broadcast coverage available, with 114,000 hours broadcast across all media platforms, an increase of 101 percent over Vancouver. There were 250 individual broadcasters covering the Games, compared to 114 for Vancouver 2010, an increase of 119 percent. There were 1.4 billion digital video views globally, a significant increase of 334 percent over Vancouver.
