Games score record views

The Beijing Winter Olympics have racked up considerable viewing figures with record domestic interest in the Games, according to the International Olympic Committee.

Timo Lumme, managing director of Television and Marketing Services of the IOC, said that as of Wednesday, almost 600 million people have watched the Beijing Games on TV in China.

"The home nation's interest for these Games has been very high, really supporting the mass increase in popularity of winter sports in China," Lumme said at a daily briefing.

"The total Chinese audience for these Games could rival the total global audience for the last Games in 2018."

Citing the opening ceremony as an example, Lumme said it was the most-watched television program in the last 10 years in China. It was also the most-watched Olympic program in China since the Beijing 2008 Games, he added.

"The opening ceremony from a broadcast perspective was a great success, beyond its artistic merit," Lumme said.

"We are still going to be looking at the exact numbers and getting information for some weeks to come, but I can today confidently say that the Beijing 2022 opening ceremony has already exceeded the global reach of any of the previous Winter Games opening ceremonies. My estimate today is that will be around 500 million viewers.

"This is far higher than the next highest television audience for an Olympic Winter Games opening ceremony, which was recorded in Sochi 2014 with 398 million people."

As for the number of viewers for the whole Games, Lumme expects it to be a new record.

"We will be working hard in the coming weeks to establish the exact global reach but based on the evidence that we've seen from the first week, we feel confident that the number will be equal to or superior to each of the averages of the previous Winter Games. So we're talking about around 2 billion people," he said.

Lumme said the Beijing 2022 Games are also "the most digitally engaged Olympic Winter Games to date".

According to the statistics he released, as of Wednesday, 57 million people have visited the Olympics website and app, which is a record for the winter edition of the Games.