Using data from two measurement firms, Omniture and mDialog, NBC stated that 2.1 million tuned into the live stream of Super Bowl XLVI this year. Of course, NBC is counting the legal stream, and given the prevalence of illegal ones, one can only assume the total number of people who streamed the Super Bowl, regardless of legality, is much higher. In NBC’s release, they said the legal stream of Super Bowl XLVI represented the most-watched single-game sports event online ever.
NBC has streamed their Sunday NFL games online before, citing that up to 300,000 people have tuned in previously. Interestingly, the 2.1 million people that tuned into the Super Bowl XLVI live stream watched a total of 4.59 million live streams, most likely because many people had to reboot the stream more than once. A total of 78.6 million total minutes were streamed.
The provided data took into account the legal streams on NBCSports.com and NFL.com, but like mentioned above, didn’t take into account all of the illegal sources that were surely streaming away. Along with the legal streaming record, Super Bowl XLVI broke a much bigger record Sunday when its television viewing record was set at 111.3 million viewers, up 300,000 from last year.
The Internet stream wasn’t simply the same feed as the television offering, but was more a complement to the television offering, providing a chat box and different viewing angles, so many of the eyeballs watching the stream were also watching the main feed on television.
(via The New York Times)
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