NBC just published their first press release about the usage of nbcolympics.com.

Some quite impressive numbers:

  • NBCOlympics.com on MSN attracts over 6 million users daily, who have already watched nearly 3.5 million hours of video content. On average, users are staying close to 15 minutes per visit and spend 20 minutes when consuming video
    My comment: 20 minutes is huge compared to the industry average of 3 min. It is also a good indication that the quality is good (people would not stick around otherwise)
  • Nearly 25 million unique users having visited the site, viewing 456 million pages watching close to 22 million video streams
  • Compared to the ENTIRE Athens Games, NBCOlympics.com on MSN is up 98% in total page views, 479% in average daily uniques and 812% in video streams after only 5 days of the Beijing Games

All in all to date is a great success and (may I say) a clear indication that Silvelight is emerging as a sound technology to deliver high quality media over the Internet.

Unfortunately (due to international broadcasting rights regulations), the video content is not available outside of the US, but I hope the NBC example will pave the way for similar models in the future.