Olympic Coverage on RT s Online Services Attracts Record Numbers

Olympic Coverage on RT s Online Services Attracts Record Numbers

30 August 2016: Traffic to RT s online and mobile services (RT .ie, RT News Now app and RT Player) for RT Sports Olympics coverage was the strongest on record

Over the course of the event, RT Sport's Olympic coverage on RT .ie and RT News Now app attracted almost 15 million page impressions and almost 2 million unique browsers; double the site traffic for EUFA Euro 2016. RT Player also delivered a high volume of streams, serving over 1.4 million streams for RT Sport's Olympic coverage, with over 78% of the streams being live.

RT Sport and RT News coverage of Michael Conlan and Katie Taylor's controversial defeats, Annalise Murphy and the O'Donovan brother's silver medal wins and the ensuing controversies concerning Pat Hickey and the OCI ticketing scandal, resulted in the highest surges in traffic across RT 's online and mobile services. The O'Donovan brothers also proved to be the viral hit of RT Sport's Olympic coverage, with RT 's post win interviews with Gary and Paul O'Donovan attracting over 10 million social media views.

The day of Michael Conlan's boxing match and Annalise Murphy's silver medal win on the 16th August drew the largest overall peak in online traffic, with 1.8 million page views to Rio 2016 content across RT .ie and RT News Now app. On this day, RT Player also served 135,000 streams, of which 100,000 streams were live.

An article on Michael Conlan's controversial defeat Crushed Michael Conlan latest victim of Rio judging farce' proved to be the biggest story of the Olympics and one of the biggest stories of the year to date, attracting 760,000 page impressions. It is currently the third most popular story across RT .ie and RT News Now app this year.

An interactive online game created by RT 's digital productions and operations team, which highlighted the controversial outcome of Michael Conlon fight against Vladimir Nikitin, also proved to be hit, attracting close to half a million page impressions.

The second heaviest day for online traffic during the Olympics, with over 1.3 million page views across RT .ie and RT News Now app, was the 15th August, the day of Katie Taylor's shock defeat. Traffic to RT Player also peaked that day with close to 130,000 streams.

The day of Gary and Paul O'Donovan's silver win in the men s lightweight sculls, attracted record audiences and delivered the third highest peak in traffic to RT 's online and mobile services, with over 1.2 million page impressions across RT .ie and RT News Now. That day also saw peak traffic to RT Player with 164,000 streams that day, of which 132,000 streams were live.

Of the online traffic to RT .ie and RT News Now for the Olympics, 79% of traffic was from mobile devices (smartphone/ tablet) and 75% of traffic was domestic, while 22% was international. On RT Player more than half of all streams were viewed on a mobile or tablet.

M irne Laffan, RT 's Chief Digital Officer said RT 's online and mobile services are an integral part of the experience of major national and sporting events and this is reflected in the increasing high volume of online users coming to RT 's portfolio of digital services for RT News and RT Sports coverage. RT Sport's Olympics coverage online, revealed some interesting emerging trends, with a significant increase in live and mobile viewing.

ENDS

LINK:	http://www.rte.ie/about/en/press-office/press-releases/2016/0830/81290...
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