Olympics Are a Page View Gold Mine

Leading up to the Games, I, along with most people I know not named Spencer Hall, were utterly uninterested in the Olympics. It’s a massive collection of fringe sports that suddenly are a part of the American sporting landscape for two weeks, every four years. (My favorite of which is men’s field hockey. I had no idea males played this game, but if they’re going to do it, they should be required to wear skirts kilts.) But, because it’s athletic competition, and it’s in HD, I found myself watching this weekend. And, in the case of the Americans out-swimming the French, rooting aloud. And, in the case of water polo being televised, attempted to understand the rules of a game I’d never seen played. Apparently, I’m not alone in my newfound Olympic fandome.

The ratings after the first weekend are staggering. The television numbers are up 22% from the Athens Games, but – being that I live in the internet – what really caught my attention are the web numbers NBC has produced so far:

Through two days, NBCOlympics.com has totaled 132.6 million page views compared to 17.9 million page views for the first two days of the Athens Games, an increase of 641%.

Yeah, so, I’d say the internet has grown slightly since 2004, especially considering NBC didn’t have much of an online sports readership to start with. While we’re here, I’d like to point out that The Sporting Blog’s numbers are up 1,000,000 to the power of infinity percent from this time four years ago -- no big deal, though.

(Info via SportsBusiness Daily's Morning Buzz, a name which the new live SportsCenter totally ripped off this AM.)

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.