London 2012: BBC Sets Another Online Traffic Record With Olympics Coverage

5:18 AM PDT 8/2/2012 by Georg Szalai

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The U.K. public broadcaster drew TV peak audience of 9.7 million for BBC1 on Wednesday and a new high for BBC Three for the Summer Games.

LONDON - The BBC Sport web site continues to break records with its coverage of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, while BBC Three set a new high for its Summer Games TV audience.

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The U.K. public broadcaster on Thursday said that it crossed the 10 million mark in terms of global visitors for the first time on Wednesday. "A huge 7.8m UK browsers to BBC Sport Online yesterday, and 10.4m global browsers breaking 10m for the first time," the BBC said in a tweet.

The top online video stream of the day, with 567,000 requests, was for the men’s cycling time trial when recent Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins won gold for Great Britain, and Chris Froome won bronze, according to the broadcaster.

Wiggins was also seen by a peak TV audience of 6.8 million, mostly via BBC1, the BBC said. But the day's biggest TV audience watched Michael Jamieson win a silver medal in the 200 meter breaststroke. That medal performance was watched by 9.7 million TV homes, according to the BBC.

"Swimming remains the sport delivering the highest peaks of the day," it said. "As well as the silver won in swimming, Team [Great Britain] won a further four medals, two of which were gold."

Rowing was up first early on Wednesday, with the gold medal victory for Britain's women in the quadruple sculls competition that saw Helen Glover and Heather Stanning outrace the competition. BBC One coverage had a peak of 4.1 million viewers at noon here, with a total peak, including another network, of 4.4 million.

But it was the eight-men rowing race where Britain won bronze that drew Wednesday's rowing peak audience with 4.9 million viewers, the BBC said.

Great Britain’s soccer team on Wednesday also beat Uruguay to progress to the quarterfinals, giving BBC Three its top peak audience of the day and of the Olympics so far with 4.3 million at 9:35pm. Including another network, the game drew a peak audience of 5.3 million.

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai