Mumbai: In their first-ever Olympics broadcast, Viacom18’s Paris 2024 coverage became the most comprehensive Olympic presentation yet in India, delivering the highest ever viewership for the Olympics in India across linear and digital platforms. Over 17 crore viewers came to JioCinema and Sports18 Network amassing an unprecedented watchtime of over 1500 crore minutes as more people watched Olympics content for longer than ever before in India.
For the first time, Olympics coverage in India was presented across 20 concurrent feeds, on JioCinema for free, as fans watched their preferred action and Indian performances anytime, anywhere on their preferred device making it the most-watched Olympics ever. The 17 sportswise feeds and three curated feeds, all available in 4K gave viewers the ability to track the finest athletes in the world in action at Paris 2024.
On linear platforms, Sports18 – 1, Sports18 – 1 HD, Sports18 – 2 ran India focused feed, Global Action was available on Sports18 – 3. Sports18 – 1 and Sports18 – 1 HD presented the Games in English with Tamil and Telugu available on language button. Sports18 – 2 offered Paris 2024 in Hindi.
“Paris 2024 is a prime example of how non-cricket sporting action is continuing to grow in adoption amongst Indian audiences. Both the viewership scale and the enthusiastic advertiser participation bear testimony to that. Our Olympic coverage was not just a world-class production, it allowed viewers to watch the action with studio experts (former Olympians), with commentary in local languages, along with compelling storytelling, and fascinating live & non-live coverage of every event across two weeks,” said Viacom18 – Digital CEO Kiran Mani.
“Our endeavour is to constantly enhance the sports viewing experience, engaging sports fans across all screens and for longer, while giving advertisers the avenues and opportunities to reach their consumers most effectively.”
The innovations in the digital viewing experience for Paris 2024 democratised access to the pinnacle of sports in an unprecedented way. Viacom18 presented the Olympics in four languages with an expert panel of former Olympians like never before, along with the biggest ever on-ground coverage of the event by an Indian broadcaster with a crew of 20+ people and ground presence across six venues. To top it up, presenting the Games with educative and exciting commentary and content that captured all the emotion and effort attached to each sport expanded user interest.
