Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 11:11 AM PT

 

Tiger Woods Scores Big for NBCSports.com

Buy whomever decided to livestream yesterday’s epic finale of the U.S. Open a frosty Pabst Blue Ribbon. Tiger Woods’ nail-biting victory gave NBCSports.com its highest-trafficked day ever, with more than 9.1 million page views, more than 2 million unique users and over 1.5 million video streams that averaged more than 17 minutes(!) per use.

Live sports are often touted as a reason to cling to your oldteevee, but with all of yesterday’s action taking place while people were at work, the TV set wasn’t an option. There were a few technical hiccups, but this was an unplanned event as the tournament was supposed to end on Sunday. Yesterday’s online performance — and audience — bodes well for watching NBC’s upcoming coverage of the Summer Olympics on the web.

ESPN and the U.S. Golf Association also livestreamed the event. We’re checking in with them to get their stats and will update as soon as we get the numbers.

UPDATE: Ummm… We might want to upgrade that celebratory drink from a PBR to something classy, like MGD. Just got some numbers from USGA.org, and they are even more impressive.

Keep in mind that these are early figures. A USGA rep told me that they are bound to be bigger once they get the official stats, but here’s how the USGA USOpen.com site did during the U.S. Open playoff yesterday:

  • 600,000 concurrent users at its peak
  • 2.5 million streams
  • 3.5 million unique visitors, 16 million pageviews visits for the entire site

And this was just for the (roughly) four hour live portion of the finals.

USGA didn’t have any time length per visit stat, but the rep said that during the tournament on Thursday and Friday of last week, the site generated 1.2 million streams with 85,000 concurrent users at its peak, with the average user spending 2.5 hours on the site.

For some sporting perspective, CBS said it got 4.8 million unique visitors for its streaming of the March Madness playoffs. NBC and the USGA combined got roughly 5.5 million in one day (though, admittedly there could be some overlap as people switched from one player to the other).

UPDATE 2: Another big winner from yesterday? American Express. While no revenue figures were disclosed, AMEX was one of four corporate partners that got exclusive marketing rights for the tournament. AMEX chose to focus on the video streaming as one of its primary tactics, getting a fifteen second pre-roll that ran in front of every one of the 2.5 million streams.

We’ve contacted NBC for any initial ad impression / revenue figures, but have not heard back. There was some chatter online about the network’s ads not working properly yesterday.

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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. 600k concurrent users?! That is an amazing number. Frankly, I’m surprised USOpen.com infrastructure was prepared to handle that kind of traffic burst.

    Rishi on June 17th, 2008 at 6:09 pm - Permalink

  2. Don’t forget these two Tiger Tidbits:

    • The official world golf rankings were released after Tiger Woods collected his 14th major championship title at the U.S. Open on Monday. Tiger has been atop the ranking for the 500th week.

    • Tiger Woods is currently the World Number 1 golfer. He was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2007, having earned an estimated $122 million from winnings and endorsements. According to Golf Digest, Woods made $769,440,709 from 1996 to 2007, and predicts that by 2010, Woods will become the world’s first athlete to pass one billion dollars in earnings.

    ;-) Randy

    Tiger Woods Hits Week 500 of Golf Top World Rankings on June 17th, 2008 at 9:39 pm - Permalink

  3. Wow. I guess he does promote an awful lot of products. Though the Tigerade isn’t all that bad.

    Liz Gannes on June 17th, 2008 at 10:00 pm - Permalink

  4. [...] NewTeeVee checked in with the USGA, which is claiming it did even bigger numbers on its site: 16 million visits, 3.5 million unique visitors and 2.5 million streams. [...]

    Tiger Woods Wins The US Open, Rules The Internet | AdsenseTrick.com on June 17th, 2008 at 10:16 pm - Permalink

  5. Great numbers, but i would argue most of those were people at work. I have a tv at my desk, i attempted to look for a stream online but i didn’t find one easily so i just tuned in to NBC on my TV.

    When you have sport events at normal hours when most people are not at work, I’m sure those numbers would be drastically different.

    And people make that content easy to find, especially an event like that. broadcast that data on air, via local TV stations. I would prefer to watch a stream on my second display than turn on my TV at work.

    Lawrence on June 18th, 2008 at 6:41 am - Permalink

  6. I also very much enjoyed the live streaming but want to point out it was available every day from Thur-Monday, flipping between ESPN and NBC depending on who was on-air at the moment. It would be interesting if you can get stats for Thur-Fri views in rounds 1-2 vs. the playoff on Monday. Their ‘channels’ also provided value for multi-screen watching at home such as the main telecast on one’s HDTV and the ‘marquee group’ channel on the PC. I did this while working at home and think I saw a glimpse of the future of TV.

    Len on June 18th, 2008 at 9:42 am - Permalink

  7. [...] of an already pretty spectacular year for sports online. Already we’ve had March Madness, Tiger Woods in the U.S. Open, Major League Baseball, heck, even the Tour de France performed decently online. [...]

    Olympics Will Webcast After Pacific Coast TV « NewTeeVee on July 29th, 2008 at 1:28 pm - Permalink

  8. [...] unexpected scenarios like these. Earlier this year, when Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate met in an 18-hole playoff, the web tuned in in droves, driving more than 4 million video [...]

    Watch the U.S. Open Tennis Match Online « NewTeeVee on September 8th, 2008 at 12:00 am - Permalink

  9. [...] those aren’t Tiger Woods numbers, they aren’t too shabby given that they didn’t have a similar brand-name star (easy, [...]

    U.S. Open Online Attracts 300,000 Users « NewTeeVee on September 10th, 2008 at 12:47 pm - Permalink

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    Kfz Versicherung on October 5th, 2008 at 11:41 am - Permalink

  11. [...] also got Alex Withers, managing director of digital media for the USGA. His team put on the biggest single day of live-streaming sports that we know of this year, delivering more than 2 million streams to more [...]

    Get Your Ticket Now for NewTeeVee Live! - GigaOM on October 24th, 2008 at 12:10 pm - Permalink

  12. [...] also got Alex Withers, managing director of digital media for the USGA. His team put on the biggest single day of live-streaming sports that we know of this year, delivering more than 2 million streams to more [...]

    Get Your Ticket Now for NewTeeVee Live! « NewTeeVee on October 24th, 2008 at 12:10 pm - Permalink

  13. Best sporting event of the year – bar none.

    Virginia Traffice Attorney on December 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am - Permalink

  14. [...] Live video is a slam dunk for sporting events, bringing in major viewership the Olympics and golf’s U.S. Open and basketball’s March Madness, and significant paying audiences for sports from baseball to [...]

    Where to Watch the Tour of California « NewTeeVee on February 13th, 2009 at 7:29 am - Permalink

  15. [...] last time Woods played was in June, during a down-to-the-wire playoff against Rocco Mediate at the U.S. Open that generated more than 4 million streams in one day. [...]

    Tiger’s Return Generates 2.5 Million Streams « NewTeeVee on February 26th, 2009 at 3:51 pm - Permalink

  16. [...] to watching games online that they would ordinarily miss because of scheduling. Tiger Woods drew millions of streams during the U.S. Open finals playoff that happened on a Monday last year and again this year when [...]

    CBS: March Madness Online Ad Revenue Nearing $30M « NewTeeVee on March 5th, 2009 at 10:15 am - Permalink

  17. [...] the two sites served up more than 4 million streams of the event in a single day. What got less attention was that match play on the Thursday and [...]

    Golf Is a Master of Online Video (With Some Help From Tiger) on April 9th, 2009 at 9:01 pm - Permalink

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    googile on April 23rd, 2009 at 5:42 am - Permalink

  19. [...] 8,000 concurrent streams for the majority of the race. But by comparison, NBC and USOpen.com had more than 4 million streams of the U.S. Open in golf last year, and CBSSports.com and the USOpen.org had 300,000 users for last [...]

    Indy 500 Streams Live!…to 36,000 on May 29th, 2009 at 1:41 pm - Permalink

  20. [...] year’s Monday U.S. Open finale generated millions of streams, though that was more about the drama of a heated race between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate. The [...]

    Where to Watch the (Delayed) U.S. Open on June 22nd, 2009 at 12:02 am - Permalink

  21. [...] and streaming live online. Will there be a nail-biting finish that generates millions of views like last year? Tune in and find out. Here’s what’s [...]

    Where to Watch the U.S. Open (and Tiger Woods) Online on June 22nd, 2009 at 6:46 am - Permalink

  22. [...] Tiger Woods Scores Big for NBCSports.com (NBC Sports) NBCSports.com: Golf – 4:21 p.m. Sunday 10th May 2009 PDT Related Media: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/NBCSports/Components/Video/_NEW/s_glf_play . [...]

    nbcsports.com/golf | Most Popular Daily Trends, News, Searches on June 22nd, 2009 at 8:36 am - Permalink

  23. Tiger Woods never ceases to amaze me!

    Rafesq on July 7th, 2009 at 7:14 am - Permalink

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