3.3 million watch games Opening

A whopping 3.3 million Australian viewers watched the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics.

It peaked at a staggering 4.4m viewers (with regional 1.5m up to 5.99m viewers nationally).

Melbourne was the biggest market with 1,028,000, followed by Sydney 1,007,000, Perth 473,000 (where it aired at 8pm) Brisbane 444,000 and Adelaide 356,000.

In comparison Athens averaged 3.03m viewers (on a Saturday morning) while Sydney erupted to 6.5m viewers average.

Airing from 10:00pm Friday – 2:17am Saturday the event gave Seven a staggering evening share:

Seven: 51.6%
Nine: 19.4%
Ten: 14.8%
ABC: 11.4%
SBS: 2.8%

The 51.5% share is based purely on 6pm-midnight, although the 3.3m is an average across the entire broadcast.

In total audience reach, 7.857 million Australians (5.881 million in the five major markets and 1.976 million in regional markets) watched all or part of Seven’s coverage of the Opening Ceremony.

By 1am there was still an average of 1.6m viewers glued to the screens, waiting for Australia’s entry into the arena.

The biggest television audience since the introduction of OzTAM people meters in 2001 remains Lleyton Hewitt’s 2005 Australian Open final with 4.04m. The Beijing Opening Ceremony is the biggest audience for 2008 (and likely to remain that way), and #6 top event since 2001.

This post updates.

Week 32.