Olympic Internet users fall below forecast

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Sydney: Far fewer people logged on to the Internet to keep track of the Sydney Olympics than expected, senior Olympic officials said on Saturday.

The International Olympic Committee's marketing division had forecast that some 35 million individuals, or "unique users", would log on to www.olympics.com and other official Games-related websites before the Sydney Olympics opened on September 15.

But with one day to go before the Games end, the officials said the anticipated figure was closer to 15 million and even that estimate may be on the high side.

"We paid too much attention to the Internet hype," said IOC senior vice president Dick Pound of Canada, the Olympic movement's marketing chief, when asked why the figure was so far below pre-Games estimates.

IOC marketing director Michael Payne said the estimated figures, equivalent to less than 0.5 percent of the global television audience of 3.7 billion Olympic viewers, showed the Internet still had a long way to go as a mainstream medium.

"The perception out there is that the whole world revolves around it," Payne said. "But as an entertainment vehicle it's not yet there. TV is still by 99.5 percent the king."

The anticipated number of unique users was seven times higher than the figure during the 1998 Nagano Winter Games and Payne said it would clearly be much higher at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Records were also set for the total number of page hits by the users, estimated at 9.7 billion. The record number of hits in a single day was 874.5 million on September 26, against 634 million hits for the entire period of Nagano's Games.

But Payne said: "While the Internet has been an unprecedented success in Sydney...people should not confuse the number of hits with how many people are actually logging on."

The time difference between Sydney and Europe and the United States had been expected to prompt huge numbers of people to log on to seek news and results from the Olympics rather than wait for delayed television broadcasts.

The IOC's contracts with traditional broadcasting rights holders also prevent television networks from using moving images of Olympic competition on websites.

The IOC has retained those rights for itself for the 2002 and 2006 Winter Games and for the 2006 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Pound said it was not clear what the Olympic movement would do with those rights, but indicated that it would not rapidly change its policy of restricting broadcasting rights to single countries or regions because of the Internet's global reach.

"I think we have to stick with the format that has got us this far in the Olympic movement -- teams, TV rights organised on a territorial basis," he said.

US broadcasting rights holder NBC has recorded lower than expected viewing figures with its prime-time television package of taped Olympic highlights.

But Pound and Payne said television audiences were up globally and in individual countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and Canada.



(c) Reuters Limited.