The Olympics are allowing Radio-Canada to reconnect with ratings that traditional broadcasters have not been used to obtaining for years, especially in the summer. In the middle of the afternoon last Sunday, nearly a million people were glued to their televisions during the men’s hammer throw final. The enthusiasm for the Paris Olympics is light years away from that seen three years ago for the Tokyo Games, weighed down by the pandemic and an unfavourable time zone difference.
In less than two weeks, the public broadcaster boasts of having generated 13.9 million video connections with the Olympic Games on its digital platforms, triple what was recorded during the Tokyo Games. The number of listeners on the Radio-Canada website is fairly stable compared to its level of three years ago, but connections on Tou.tv have exploded exponentially (+1973%), while for the first time competitions are broadcast live on the platform.
“We are seeing strong growth in digital compared to previous Games, with ICI Tou.tv in the lead, but we can see that this performance does not affect that of linear platforms,” Guylaine O’Farrell, spokesperson for the institution, emphasizes by email.
Live viewing on traditional television remains very popular, contrary to what has been observed for years in normal times in the television industry. Unsurprisingly, the highest audience ratings were recorded during the lighting of the Olympic flame and Celine Dion’s performance a few minutes later. Just under 1.3 million viewers were watching ICI Télé live at that time. The generalist channel also nearly reached a million audience ratings on Sunday afternoon between 3:30 and 4 p.m., when the men’s hammer throw final and then the men’s 100m were presented back to back.
Viewers soared to nearly 800,000 for the women’s soccer match between Canada and Colombia on July 31. An interest that is undoubtedly not unrelated to the spy scandal that has tarnished the Canadian team.
During the day, ICI Télé has captured 28.7% of the audience share in the French-speaking market since the start of the games, an increase of 5.4% compared to Tokyo. Radio-Canada is also doing better than usual. Last year, ICI Télé posted an average market share of 23.2%. The success of these Games is good news for the public broadcaster, for whom the Olympic Games represent a real windfall in advertising revenue. In its 2021-2022 fiscal year, CBC / Radio-Canada reported a 29% increase in revenue “mainly due to growth in advertising revenue in the context of coverage of the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Olympic Games.”
More employees mobilized
The Crown corporation refuses to say how much the Olympic Games cost, particularly to obtain broadcasting rights. “Competitive information,” they insist at Radio-Canada.
We do know, however, that 250 people are working full-time on the Olympic Games, all of them from Montreal, even if some are from other regions. Radio-Canada does not specify how many employees were moved to the city for the Olympics, nor how much this generates in expenses.
“People who come from regional stations, it allows them to gain experience, to experience things that they would not otherwise experience. And this experience that they will have acquired by coming here to Montreal, they will be able to share with their station when they return,” adds Luc Lebel, producer-coordinator of Olympic coverage. According to him, it is necessary for all operations to be centralized from Montreal for technical reasons.
Meanwhile in Paris, 184 people are deployed on the ground, including a hundred who also serve the English network. This is significantly more than in Tokyo, where the workforce was limited to 130 people. Radio-Canada, which is the official broadcaster of the Olympic Games at least until 2032, stands by its decision to opt for more extensive coverage on site this time.
“It’s certain that we have more people in Paris. Yes, it’s the end of a pandemic, but it was also an opportunity to work in French, which hasn’t happened for a long time. These are the first French-speaking games [d’été] since Montreal in 1976. It’s historic and we decided to mark the occasion because we knew that the interest would be there,” says Luc Lebel.