63% of Hulu Subscribers Streamed the Olympics Live Or On-Demand

• Hulu reports that 63 percent of its subscribers streamed Olympics live or on demand.
• Each viewer, out of the 450,000 subscriber-base, watched the Olympics for an average of 15 hours.
• This was the least watched Olympics ever.

Hulu claims that 63% of its Live TV subscribers have streamed nearly 6.5 million hours of NBC Universal’s coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. However, given the fact that Hulu is co-owned by NBC Universal parent Comcast, the news shouldn’t be that surprising.

According to sources from Multichannel News, the most streamed events include women’s figure skating, bobsledding, snowboarding, alpine skiing, ski jumping, and freestyle skiing. Also, subscribers from West: Santa Barbara, California, Burlington, Vermont; Twin Falls, Idaho; Duluth, Minnesota; and North Platte, Nebraska, accounted for the majority of the viewer base. These were the top local markets for streaming the Olympics through Hulu.

Furthermore, Hulu also added a personalized interface to prepare for the 18-day long quadrennial event. They provided a portal which allowed users to select a particular event they would like to watch. Hulu then sent alerts regarding its airtime/viewing availability to the users. It is expected that this little enhancement has helped increase the viewer count to its current potential.

Now, the exact number of subscribers enrolled for Hulu Live TV is not known. Since its launch in May 2017, CNBC estimates around 450,000 should be on the live streaming platform. This equates to the event receiving 15 hours of streaming from each viewer. Hulu has provided intel that the company has over 17 million total subscribers combining both their on-demand video streaming and live streaming service.

Nevertheless, despite such large number of viewers that streamed the event, it remains a fact that this was the least watched Olympics ever. It cannot be argued that traditional TV used to bring in a lot more viewers. But still, in this current generation of cord cutters and cord nevers, it is a positive sign for NBC that there will always be viewers for their big events albeit, not as large as it used to be.