Live TV set for gold as over 70% in UK prepare for Winter Olympics

The survey questioned 1,244 people in the UK and found that 71% said they were going to watch the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with, perhaps surprisingly, the majority of respondents planning to watch the games live on television. Indeed, 78% of respondents said their preferred way of watching live sporting events including the Olympics was going to be via TV.

Surprisingly, given the surge in SVOD over the last two years and the online and mobile offers from rights holders such as Discovery for the games, nearly a fifth of those surveyed said that they’ll watch the games on catch-up TV and only 8% planned to watch the event via streaming services. In general, just 16% indicated a preference to watch live sporting events via streaming services.

As many as 83% of respondents stated that they much preferred to watch the Olympics on TV because they believe there’s better commentary on TV (35%) and the camera angles and coverage are better (35%). Another 13% of those asked said they simply don’t like streaming services whereas 18% do not have access to streaming services. 17% of people said they did not own a TV or have access to one so watch events such as the Olympics via streaming services on their phone or tablet.

That said, the study did discover that streaming services had their place and are a popular choice for some. Amongst the minority of people who preferred to stream services to terrestrial television, over half of respondents (56%) said it was because of the flexibility and convenience streaming services provides and the ability to use these services at any time and in any place across all types of devices as long as there was a good internet connection.

Another key trend discovered by Toluna was that watching TV programmes via social media channels was becoming a firm favourite. More than half (54%) of those surveyed said that while they enjoy watching television programmes, including coverage on live events like the 2022 Winter Olympics, they tend to do this via a social media channel. For example, watching an ITV or Channel 4 broadcast via Facebook or YouTube. Rapid TV News