“TV Everywhere” enabled nearly 800,000 unique users to watch Team USA’s 5-2 triumph over the Czech Republic in the men’s hockey quarterfinals from the Sochi Olympics.
According to the NBC Olympics, 798,337 uniques watched the authenticated live stream of the hockey game on Wednesday afternoon, the most for any Olympics event in the history of NBC Sports Live Extra. Moreover, the contest ranks second to the 2.1 million non-authenticated uniques for Super Bowl XLVI, NBC Sports Group’s most-streamed event overall. The previous Olympic record: 682,806 uniques for the U.S.-Japan women’s soccer final at the 2012 London Games.
All told, 24.1 million minutes of Wednesday’s hockey game were streamed, beating the second-most streamed event of the Sochi Games, the U.S.-Russia hockey game (14.8 million) on Feb. 15 by nearly 10 million minutes and almost doubling the third, men’s snowboard halfpipe (12.2 million minutes), on Feb. 11.
For the Sochi Winter Olympics to date, NBCOlympics.com has totaled more than 1.08 billion page views, a record for a Winter Games. In addition, more than 19 million unique users have consumed video -- encompassing live streams, exclusive highlights and features -- a 181% advance from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, which played out during the infancy of tablets, and up 5% from the 2012 London Games. Summer Olympics showcase many more events and significantly more content than their Winter counterparts.
NBCOlympics.com figures to net large stream counts in the days ahead, as the U.S.-Canada vie for gold in women’s hockey on Thursday, Feb. 20 at noon (ET) and the ladies’ free skate competition unfurls throughout the late morning and early afternoon. On Friday, the North American rivals collide in the semifinals of the men’s hockey tournament at noon.
